Inner Me Project

 In this project, we had to take a picture of ourself walking or standing, find a picture of a sidewalk with a wall/building behind it & find our "inner self". You would turn that into a shadow (which I used to opacity tool for) and try to attached it to yourself with Free transform and the Warp tool. My shadow is a artist which I want to become when I get older. I mainly used the magic wand tool to cut that out and painted it black.Then, I used the blur effect on the shadow so it can sort of shadowy. I also used the lasso tool to grab myself and place me on the sidewalk along with some black and white adjustments.

Tattoo

 We learned how to put tattoos on pictures and make them look real.Therefore, we used the dodge tool in photoshop to highlight shape and lines so that the tattoo can have something to follow by. Then we used the burn tool to darken everything else that wasn't highlighted. Finally, I used certain features called smart filters, like subtract and soft light to make the tattoo look real and sort of traced. To give it a more realistic look, I made the photo black and white.

Displacement Map

 I thought the directions for this assignment were sometimes confusing. It would tell you to do something but not explain on how to get to/do it. I thought the whole text and wrap around the the curves thing was pretty awesome. Especially, where it blends into and mixes with the background texture. If I was to do anything different, I think I would have used a drop shadow to try to make the text look like it sort of "sinks" into the rock like background. Other than that, I like how this turned out.

Combining Vectors with Photographs

 For this assignment, we learned how to use different tools like the rectangle marquee tool to cut and shape things together. Also, we used a inverse tool to help show some of the picture that was overlapped. Plus, we learned how to place and work with random shapes like the flowers above. The easiest thing for me in this was placing the flowers around all over the place. The hardest thing was probably making sure that everything looked okay.

Compositing w/ Sihouette

 This assignment was very confusing at times. Some of the hardest things about this creation was for the padded room picture that you see at the bottom of the dude. You had to take two pics and merge them together to create some kind of grunge look to it and use a linear burn to make it dark. However as you can see, mine didn't work out so well sadly. On the other hand, some easier techniques were to use the hue/saturation layer to create a blue-ish glow on the man's face.

Montage

This assignment was really tricky for me. The reason is, I had to find a "soft"like brush to use to help make the different images blend. The problem was that there was no "soft"like brush and it was difficult to lightly blend the images together. I thought it was also cool at time that you could do this with a brush and a bunch of layers. For each indiviual image, I had to create a layer for it and a mask so that I could do the blending. I think that if I had a little more practice with this, it could look better.

Vintage Polaroid

For this assignment, I had to use textures for the background and polariod borders to make it look real. I thought using this and the saturation tool was cool because it really makes it look vintage. Also, I had to use multiple layers to keep each feature separate and organized. Plus, for the photo, you had to add drop shadows and strokes. I thought this assignment was fun but, at times, confusing and very long. I think I need to work on the space between the photo and border to make it look "deeper".

Refined Edges

This assignment was to help me understand how to work the refine edges tools/features in Photoshop. For instance, I used the quick selection tool to grab and select the dog. The purpose of this was to be able to make the dog or object pop out more of it's background to where you can see more things(like it's hair) easier. I also had to use a saturation tool to make the background lighter to see the dog better. My honest opinion about this assignment is that when I look at the original and my work (at the bottom), I don't really see a difference. If you look close enough, mine is a little lighter than the top one.

Image: http://www.google.com/imgres?num=10&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1920&bih=989&tbm=isch&tbnid=ZuHbP0Uub0SWtM:&imgrefurl=http://newburglaralarminfo.blogspot.com/2012/06/cutest-little-long-haired-dachshund-i.html&docid=lPrg_ipXCmpVOM&imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q738Q_Eselc/T9LPSCQURzI/AAAAAAAAAII/M8KMUTI56Rc/s1600/cutest%252Blittle%252Blong%252Bhaired%252Bdachshund%252BI%252Bhave%252Bever%252Bseen.jpg&w=443&h=541&ei=2xzwUL2EC-322AXkj4GgBQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=463&sig=115001630369110303133&page=2&tbnh=146&tbnw=117&start=60&ndsp=74&ved=1t:429,r:74,s:0,i:380&tx=76&ty=108

Veggie Head

 In this assignment, I was able to learn new tools like the lasso tool to try to get an intro into Photoshop. I used the Rectangle marquee tool to get most of these different vegetables selected. Then, I had to use different versions of this tool (Elliptical marquee tool) to get circular objects. At times, I would use a scissor-like tool to cut objects out of their original places(or pictures). Also, I would have to sometimes copy and flip a object to make a replica of it. For example, the ears and eyebrows. I thought this assignment was tricky at first, but it got better towards the end when I had to repeat certain procedures. Furthermore, I probably need to work on the lasso tool a little more.