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C&c

I

indierthanthou

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
91
0
It's my first chop....be gentle!

*edit* forgot to mention, this is just a picture I scalped off the web, can't remember from where, I just got it to practice on, i am not pretending its mine.
rose1.jpg

original

rosesblack.jpg

levels and I forget what else I did (any help with reminding me would be greatly appreciated)

rosetouch1.jpg

touch of color-flower only

rosetouch2.jpg

touch of color-rose and leaves

I think the 2nd one is one of my favorites, the other two are your garden variety touch of color pictures
 
Lovesong

Lovesong

macrumors 65816
Sep 15, 2006
1,137
1
Stuck beween a rock and a hard place
Umm... a couple of things- first off as any of the pros (those that actually shoot for a living, myself not included) will tell you in about 30 seconds is that it's inherently not cool to "scalp" pictures off the web, alter them and whatever. I think I'd be willing to give you a pass, for educational purposes, but like I said, I'm not a pro, and you're bound to make someone upset.

That being said, your PS skills are obviously in their budding stages, and the fact that no one gets everything right the first time should not be a deterrent to further pursue a hobby. Now, my CC is:
For the first: Wow, you have found the curves (or maybe even the contrast slider) [hint- apple-m gets you there as well]. A sharp S-curve will produce this sort of image. Another way you can do it is by stumbling onto the equalize or posterize buttons. It looks cool and vintage, but it's not something you can't do in 12 seconds. I would suggest you try turning it to B&W- it tends to work with contrasty things:
See Thumbnail one

For the other 2: I guess I must be the only one that is getting sick and tired of those B&W with a bit of color. This is likely a personal taste thing. One thing I would say is that you need to be a bit more careful selecting the colors that you are keeping and removing. There is a streak of green on the bottom left corner of the flower in both images. One thing you can do is use the selective color, and select green in the first of these, and desaturated it. Also it helps to use a mask, as you can go back and forth without damaging the image. Another thing I would suggest is that you up the saturation of the image when you're trying to draw the contrast with the B&W. It just works better.
 

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I

indierthanthou

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
91
0
Lovesong said:
Umm... a couple of things- first off as any of the pros (those that actually shoot for a living, myself not included) will tell you in about 30 seconds is that it's inherently not cool to "scalp" pictures off the web, alter them and whatever. I think I'd be willing to give you a pass, for educational purposes, but like I said, I'm not a pro, and you're bound to make someone upset.

That being said, your PS skills are obviously in their budding stages, and the fact that no one gets everything right the first time should not be a deterrent to further pursue a hobby. Now, my CC is:
For the first: Wow, you have found the curves (or maybe even the contrast slider) [hint- apple-m gets you there as well]. A sharp S-curve will produce this sort of image. Another way you can do it is by stumbling onto the equalize or posterize buttons. It looks cool and vintage, but it's not something you can't do in 12 seconds. I would suggest you try turning it to B&W- it tends to work with contrasty things:
See Thumbnail one

For the other 2: I guess I must be the only one that is getting sick and tired of those B&W with a bit of color. This is likely a personal taste thing. One thing I would say is that you need to be a bit more careful selecting the colors that you are keeping and removing. There is a streak of green on the bottom left corner of the flower in both images. One thing you can do is use the selective color, and select green in the first of these, and desaturated it. Also it helps to use a mask, as you can go back and forth without damaging the image. Another thing I would suggest is that you up the saturation of the image when you're trying to draw the contrast with the B&W. It just works better.
Click to expand...

I saw the streak of green, but i have no idea how to fix it, short of going back and starting that section over. I desaturated and then used history brush to bring the color back. is there any way that I can select an area to keep colored, and turn the rest b&w? how do i up the saturation? what is a mask for?
 
Lovesong

Lovesong

macrumors 65816
Sep 15, 2006
1,137
1
Stuck beween a rock and a hard place
indierthanthou said:
I saw the streak of green, but i have no idea how to fix it, short of going back and starting that section over. I desaturated and then used history brush to bring the color back. is there any way that I can select an area to keep colored, and turn the rest b&w? how do i up the saturation? what is a mask for?
Click to expand...

Well, a mask is just like it sounds- something that masks things. The way it works is that if you were to have 2 layers of the same image (one in monochrome, the other in color), you can "hide" the image in the front (or bits and pieces of it) by masking it. When you are masking, you are painting over the areas you want to "remove" (in black) and the areas that are visible are in white. You can paint over an area as much as you want, and hence, the non-destructive nature of the tool.

The saturation can be edited by either the Hue/Saturation menu (apple-u) or by producing a concave curve (decreasing the midtones to highlights and sharpening the transition between them).

Now there are a number of things you can do to remove the green. A magnetic lasso should allow you to select the edge of the flower, as will a wand wizard. If you want to go all out, you will need to look up how to use a background eraser (it's a process) and how to use the extract function. In short, the former is under the regular eraser, and will allow you to delete only the background (or the color that the crosshairs in the cursor fall on). It's clumsy, but it has gotten me out of trouble. The extract tool is a whole subset of tools, but the idea is that you highlight the edges of an image, fill in the parts you want to keep, erase everything else, and then clean up the edges.
 
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