Lucky accident

[olroy2044]

Don't know exactly what I did here, but I like it! Wish I knew more about P/S so I could bring in the top of the rose.

Ricoh XR-1 Viv-Kiron 75-150 Fuji Superia 400


Roy

[PeterW]

Nice picture, Roy. It isn't difficult to do what you want in PS.

First, do a Save As of your picture and work on that so there's no chance of messing up the original.

Open the Save As pic in PS and choose the Burn tool. It's in one of the blocks of tools on the left hand side of the screen, with the Dodge and Sponge tools in the same block.

At the top of the screen, set the Range to Midtones and the Exposure to about 8%-9%. Adjust the size of the burn brush by using the square brackets on the keyboard - left bracket makes it smaller, right bracket makes it larger.

Now stroke the brush down the top and side of the rose while you hold down the left mouse key. Lift your finger off the mouse button every two or three strokes to see how it's getting on. The tool will darken the washed-out red and also give an outline in blue as it also darkens this.

If you take things too far, press Control + Z to undo the last two or three strokes.

If you want to you can change the top setting to Range - Shadows, Exposure 3%-4%, make the brush slightly smaller and darken the shadows that outline some of the petals. Use the Shadows setting sparingly, it works quite quickly.

The Dodge tool is used in a very similar way except that it lightens not darkens. I don't use the Sponge tool for photographs as I find it rather smudgy.

When you've got what you want, save it and then try a light touch of Unsharp Mask. Go to Filter at the top of the screern and choose Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask. In the box that comes up choose as starters, Amount = 30, Radius =1.0 and Threshold = 0. Try it and, if you don't like the result, undo it with Control + Z or go to File -> Revert to Saved.

The Burn, Dodge and Unsharp Mask tools are very useful to adjust photographs and, once you get a little practice, aren't difficult to use. Be warned, though, it's also easy to overdo things, so save often so you can Revert to Saved if you go a bit OTT.

Have a go, and let us know how you get on.

Best of luck.

PeterW

[Deleted]

I have Photoshop Elements on my home computer. Got an invitation from Adobe to download and use PS CS4 for 30 days for free, which I did. I like the interface on regular PS better than Elements. I thought what the heck--I'll see how much it would cost to purchase PS CS4 on Line. Apparently the version I am trying has some extra bells and whistles. Only ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!! Absolutely absurd. It's back to Elements when the 30 day trial is over.

[nikonbob]

Roy

Lovely photo Roy even if you don't know how you did it. I hope you can bring in the rose in PS.

Wayne

Have you looked into doing a night course at a college. A friend of mine took one here on PS. Turned out that gave him a student number and the ability to buy CS4 at a student rate. It was very cheap even including the course cost.

Bob

[Deleted]

Bob:

Thanks. I'll look into that. Actually Elements does everything I need it to do. I just like the PS interface much better.

Wayne

[herron]

Bob's right.

Several years ago I took a one semester course at Center for Creative Studies, and was able to use my "student" I.D. to get a huge discount on software.

Almost time for another refresher course!

[olroy2044]

Thank you all for your comments. As is said, "Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while."

Tried to work on it in P/S and discovered right away that my almost 10 year old Gateway doesn't have enough horses to do it. I have all the stuff necessary to assemble a new computer, so I'll have to wait 'til it's done. Regards, Roy