Day 272: Burned Fabric

Interesting effect using a simple texture, displacement map and burn tool.

Tutorial link

Day 271: Bird Lady from Cross Country

The Cross Country Invitational at Morley field not only had a ton of runners from multiple states but also an interesting mix of spectators. First, the ROAD, image from last week and now, THE BIRD LADY for today. For the same day. I also have a picture of a woman who looks like she is burping her dog but I'm not sure what to do with that one.

Tutorial link

Day 270: Yearbook Summer Activities

The yearbook class is trying to get good summer activities pictures from the students. I would love to have alligator wrestling, skydiving and climbing the pyramids in the book this year... hopefully someone will give me pictures soon!

Day 269: Rock Text

I really like Corey Barker's tutorials. Since I spent too long trying to find a good concrete texture I didn't figure out the best way to get my brush to taper off the way his did. Ah well... maybe next time :)

Tutorial Link

Day 268: Film Strip Charlie

This was a simple effect using a constrained crop on four images, appliting an inner stroke and using the Distort:Twirl filter to create a twisted photo booth strip.

Tutorial link

Day 267: Freaky Long Fingers

Elongated fingers, gradient map, masked eyeballs within fingers and a series of weird textures. It's a bit early for Halloween but I'm getting ready for some freaky days :)

Day 266: More BlackLight Experiment

Here is another experiment with a picture from the black light dance. This time I used a photo that I took with a longer exposure.

Day 265: OilPaint Black Light Dance

Here's a painted effect applied to a picture I took at the recent school black light dance.

Day 264: Abstract Twirl Text

I followed a somewhat simple tutorial effect. The instructions were a bit off but I was able to achieve a similar effect. I messed with the lighting a bit by adding a reflected gradient in the middle to darken the colors in the back. I also add a lens flare set to overlay.

Tutorial link

Day 263: The Road

Before and After: I was out taking pictures of the Cross Country Team at Morley Field. I ran across a rather interesting guy with the most amazing mutton chops I had ever seen. Having recently watched the movie "THE ROAD", combined with the baggage this man was carrying I thought I would try a semi-post apocalyptic style effect. Using a variety of HDR and sharpening  techniques combined with several textures , a gradient map and a dry brush filter here is my before and after images.

Day 262: Quick CrossBlur Effect

 I made some tone and detail adjustments before I started the motion blur. I also added a slight texture to the image. I originally attempted to do this effect with a darker image but it didn't work. It appears that you need to have a relatively light texture or when you change the blending modes it is almost unrecognizable since there is not enough contrast.

Tutorial Link

Day 261: Color Dodge Text

I added several variations to the tutorial:

• I duplicated the text layer and added an inner shadow and set that to fill 0%
• I duplicated the small light burst layer and set it to Linear Burn
• Added a curves adjustment layer to pops increase the contrast

Tutorial link

Day 260: Icy Text

A simple to create text effect. There are eight layer styles applied to a single text layer. I added a separate blurred shadow to the text, a slight, black vignette to the edges and a small amount of dried paint texture. The background is a frozen rose.

Tutorial link

Day 259: Glass Text

This is perhaps my favorite of the glass text effects I've seen so far. The steps were easy to follow and the effect looks nice. The only think I would change is where the 2 hits the surface line (the serif of the COOPER font I used is too low).

Tutorial link

Day 258: Yearbook ID Cards

Here is the rough draft layout for my Yearbook ID cards. It should be no surprise that I used Barney as my test student... it's a sickness!

Day 257: Zombie Hand

I played Left 4 Dead 2 way too much this summer... plus I'm drawn to the splatter brushes (maybe too many violent movies and scary novels). I scanned my own hand and followed most of the steps in the tutorial.

Tutorial link

Day 256: Attack Pug

He's quite the ferocious beast!

Day 255: Ornamental Text

I started with a tutorial I found but stopped halfway through when the steps were not clear- right around the "GEM" step. I absolutely loved the brushes that were linked on the site. I downloaded several other packs of brushes from the same designer.

Tutorial link

Day 254: 3D Football Field

I'm so ready for football today!!! Sunday night- Redskins:Cowboys... Go Skins!

More 3d inside of Photoshop. I'm slowly getting the hang of what effects can be created however I'm still very tentative about what I can make with it. I also realized that I need way more RAM in my machine if I want to render larger 3D images... and here I thought 4GB was plenty!

Go Redskins!

Day 253: 3D Text

More experimentation with 3D in CS5. After I spent more time working with the Mesh and Camera pans than I had intended I realized that I used day 252 instead of day 253. It would have taken too long to redo so ignore the last two and imagine it was a three instead.

Day 252: Painted Flamingos

More faux painting effects. The streaks in the feathers are great!

Day 251: OilPainting Charlie

(Before and After) I played around with several high pass filters, soft light blending mode, an experimental filter from Adobe labs (pixelbender) and the Mixer Brush tool. The effect on the flowers and the clothing is fantastic however the faces are a bit off. I applied a mask to Charlie's eyes to have the pupils show through. I'm eager to try out some more images with this technique.

Day 250: WebRedesign

It doesn't seem like much but I added an additional button and page to my class website (LINKS). I messed up the css style sheet pretty bad so I had to tweak on this for a while to get the slices to work.

Day 249: Barney Castro

Barney as a puppy. Warning: Smoking is bad, can cause cancer and bulging eyes.

Day 248: War Barney

More propaganda... I took inspiration from a WWII tutorial I found online. I was somewhat limited with how much I could crop the image since the original photo of Barney was cropped at the ears. Overall I really like the finished piece.

Day 247: Ice Cream Chuck

I tweaked with the HDR Tone Adjustments that are new to CS5. I dropped a grunge paper texture in the background and masked out Charlie's face. The text is a bit hard to read (Keep them coming ice cream man) but after all of the work getting the lighting right... the text was a bit of an afterthought.

Day 246: Farmer Charlie

Fun stuff. I love using pictures of my nephew, my dog and my friends. It's a nice switch from using stock photos!

Day 245: Class Website

Using Photoshop, Dreamweaver and CSS style sheets I've dramatically reworked my classweb site to pair down the information and focus on the core elements. I wanted the look to be clean, clear and straight forward. I really had to hold back on making a more dramatic and grungy design. I also trimmed the navigation bar in half. I'm not sure if I'm going to need to add more navigation buttons or not... I want Links, a gallery, an attendance report section, an area for blogs.... arghh too much... I need to focus on the essentials... :)

Day 244: 3D Text

I played around a bit more with the 3D repousse in CS5. Interesting textures. I struggled a bit with the #D settings and tools. I will need more practice.

Day 243: Botox

I really like the concept but I'm not happy with the color scheme. The logo doesn't pop off of the background as much as I would like.