Portfolio Poster Assignment
I was taking so long to decide which images to use for this, that I finally went with the layout above, which has half a dozen larger images and quite a few thumbnails.
The inspiration for the above layout was my old stamp collection. One of my books had special pockets you tuck the stamps into. I added the angles.
Even taking it down to this few images of my work required some agonizing decisions.
There is a gradient (foreground to transparent) on the word "See" (which I pulled around like taffy using the Puppet Warp tool) and also on the "I." Layer effects are throughout and there is text on a path using the Pen tool. The background art consists of double-flipped custom gradients, merged with lots of opacity effects. The landscape photos I took last semester, and added perspective tool effects to the sides. A lot went into this, and a lot more easily could have but at some point you really do have to stop.
The inspiration for the above layout was my old stamp collection. One of my books had special pockets you tuck the stamps into. I added the angles.
Even taking it down to this few images of my work required some agonizing decisions.
There is a gradient (foreground to transparent) on the word "See" (which I pulled around like taffy using the Puppet Warp tool) and also on the "I." Layer effects are throughout and there is text on a path using the Pen tool. The background art consists of double-flipped custom gradients, merged with lots of opacity effects. The landscape photos I took last semester, and added perspective tool effects to the sides. A lot went into this, and a lot more easily could have but at some point you really do have to stop.
30 Second Sketches Assignments
Getting these coloring book effects came from 13 acts of faith, following the well thought-out steps of others. Using a combination of hot keys took me from the before photos below to the after images above. They took me about two minutes each because I kept losing my place and fussing to get them even better, or they would have been about one minute or yes with practice - 30 seconds. This tutorial might not be online, it came from my instructor.
Paragraph Text Image Wrap
Text wrap is traditionally more of an InDesign feature. That doesn't mean that you can't do something like that right in Photoshop. I thought this would be a bit easier but I think the things that stalled me out on this were oversights of my own, always trying to make things more difficult than they need to be.
Painting With the Mixer Brush
The photo at left below was from the CD that came with Photoshop Classroom in a Book. The photo at right is from my upstairs window at sunset; I took the liberty of removing the power lines. The above renderings make use of Photoshop's incredibly detailed brushes, with everything from dry to wet media and performance down to how many bristles and the shape of the brush. I am not a painter but these tools could help anybody with enough time and sheer will get painterly looks out of photos. It's not as quick as the Artistic Filters but it is way more fun and gives you incredible control.
Space Graphic Project Assignment
I am a huge fan of all things to do with space, science, science fiction and planetary geography. The planet tutorial that resulted in the photorealistic image above was not as difficult as I would expect, considering the end result. Usually the bottom image I include on Weebly is an element (usually a photo) that I started from. The amazing thing about this assignment was that everything was created from scratch. No photos were used at all. There is also an additional tutorial for creating amazing rings but I chose not to use that this time.