The grandaddy of all projects - combining images to make a virtual world scene. This assignment had so much freedom, I almost didn't know where to begin. Got some inspiration from my mum when she volunteered at Nan Tien temple, so I drew a quick, very ugly mockup.

Went to a nearby temple to grab a couple of shots, then travelled to the city to grab some scenery shots from the Chinese Gardens. Also, waterfalls aren't exactly common in Sydney, so I had to be creative and snap all the water features near Darling Harbour.

Before I started fixing them up in photoshop, I used the Camera Raw plugin to get the colours I wanted. With the temple, I wanted to emphasise it's vibrant colours. With the water, I wanted a blue tinge, and I darkened the background so I could easily remove it and change its blending mode to something like Screen.

Then came the deep-etching. Oh, God, the deep-etching. So much zooming in. So much eye strain. I had to deep-etch rocks which would become the mountains. I had to deep-etch the temples and pagodas. I had to deep-etch the model.

Next, I had to enlarge the rock so it would look like a mountain, as well as duplicate it to make the background. And I had to duplicate it in such a way as to be different each time. And the rock was oddly shaped too, which added to my woes. Clone Stamp was a huge help.

The sky was in (and I made it extremely blue on purpose), the moutains were in. Now I had to put in the temples, pagodas, and waterfalls. Putting in the temple was hard. I had to burn in some shadows to make it look like it was built on the mountain and not just stuck in by some media student. I also erased some bits with a soft-edged eraser, and changed the lighting dramatically on the pagodas to make them look semi-natural. I made the lighting in the foreground brighter than the background.

I looked at some references to see how mist and fog settles around mountains, then I brushed them into the background and foreground with a medium brush set onto white and 35% opacity, changing the brush shapes to vary the look of the fog.

Next, I used the field from the temple picture, but manipulated the photo with Puppet Warp to turn it into a hill. Then I placed the deep-etched model onto the hill, burnt in some shadows and changed her lighting so that she look like she was in the foreground and closer to the audience than the rest of the image.

Well, this project was sort of fun - merging two faces together to create a new but slightly recognisable face. When I was younger, I always though there was some magic program that people used to do this, but it was just photoshop. Go figure.

Merging me and a classmate.

A lot of colour and lighting correction had to go into this. My skin's yellow and her skin's pink. I used my skin as the base and started to mess about with her skin using colour balance and a little bit of Hue/Saturation. As you can see in the photo above, she ended up looking even more yellow than me. I used levels to add more light to the photos.

I put her photo into a layer above mine, masked it, then started brushing in the bits I wanted to use. I also marquee tool'd her fringe and pasted it over my forehead.

Next, I did some small colour correcting with Colour Balance to make the different skin colours more harmonious. And so we ended up with this.

So here it is, my first project along with the finished product.

Fairly straightforward. Got rid of all the rips and damage to the picture with Clone Stamp, then marquee tool'd the left ear onto the right ear, forgetting to check the shadow of the right ear so I could fix it up later. RARGH.

Then because I'm extremely picky, I got rid of all the spots in the background that were bugging me, as well as High Passed to make the image sharper.

Fixed up the lighting using Levels and Curves, though I might have gone a little crazy with the Levels. The colours turned out really sharp, which I didn't realise till now. Eh well. Melded in the ear too, because it doesn't do to leave a subject with a dodgily photoshop'd ear.

Finally, masks and colours. Put on a solid colour fill layer, masked it, then started brushing in the bits I wanted. Changed the colour blend to 'Colour' so the layer sat naturally over the image instead of covering anything.

So annoyed at myself for having forgotten to use the dodge and burn tool in my assessment. I've known about it for years, and I didn't even think to use it. What is wrong with me?!

In an attempt to hammer it back into my head, I've been messing about with both tools.

Original

Sorry I ruined your face.

Yes, I'm well aware I destroyed the effect of the photo, but it was never my intention to 'fix' it. It's just a demo of how the tools can lighten and darken certain areas in an image.

I've finally managed to understand masks after all these years! I can’t believe how simple it actually was after Alexia explained it to me. Didn’t even know inverted masks existed.

Inverted

'Normal'

And I learnt this just in time too. I'm definitely going to need masks in the assessment if I'm going to put some colour back into a black and white photo.

I just hope I don't fail, or at least don't fail spectacularly.

I've actually dealt with curves and levels before back in high school, although the teacher didn't go into too much depth because she wasn't particularly brilliant at ps. So curves and levels are just adjustments that I've messed about with, without really caring how they could really fix up a photo.

Now I know I have to adjust it so there's some input at the ends of the 'Input Levels'.

Like so.

Curves I still don't think I've gotten the hang of, but I'm pretty sure if I keep experimenting with it, I'll get how it's used.

Hooray for messing with settings to darken photos.

I know I'm going to need these two, especially levels, when it comes to the assessment. I'm just hoping I don't go crazy with the settings and ruin the picture.

Learnt about the Colour Sampler tool. Now I can cross it off my list of 'Photoshop Tools I Haven't A Clue How To Use'.

Original

Balanced

I know my tutor said it's a slower way of fixing up the colour, but it's such an awesome technique that I've been using it to fix random images on the internet just because I can.