Just feels like Spring this fine morning. Felt like posting something cheerful.

Shot in digital, edited in Photoshop.

While I continue being too busy at work, run over to The Online Photographer and watch the video of the “Paintball Office” photo shoot. Sure the photo shoot looks long and difficult, but isn’t PhotoShop cool?

I’m still playing with vectors and photos. Still no idea what I’m going to do with it. The technique I’m using is extremely simple. I’m overlaying the vector shapes and text over the photos in PhotoShop, then adjusting the opacity and layer blending modes. Here’s the latest sketch.

It was feeding time at the zoo in case you’re wondering what this beautiful young lady was looking at so intently. I don’t know about you, but I’d hesitate to open a door if she was looking though a window from the other side.

I recently wrote about PhotoShop blending modes, and I have found a good follow up on that. Go visit Jay Arraich’s Photoshop Tips – Blend Modes for more about the individual modes.

I’m fascinated by the use of vector shapes and script fonts with photos. Inspiration in its vaguest form. I haven’t worked out exactly what I’m going to use it for, but I’ve been playing with ideas. Nothing more than rough PhotoShop sketches so far, but there’s a lot of potential there. Here’s my latest sketch.

Using the word strength may be a bit of a cliché, but this is just a sketch. Besides, Lorem Ipsum looked funny.

Jason suggested in the comments of my last PhotoShop post that I should discuss blend modes and adjustment layers next. I’d hate for anyone to think that I don’t listen.

I’ll use another of my Patoka Lake photos as an example. Here’s the original.

To start with, I’ll briefly discuss blending modes. I’m not an expert on the subject, but I feel comfortable giving an overview. The purpose of blending modes is to alter the way that partially transparent layers interact with layers below them. The normal mode is just that, normal transparency. The other modes aren’t that simple. Not only are they transparent, but they affect the way this transparency is displayed. Lighten for instance compares overlapping colors and chooses the lightest color. It does this for each different color independently, thus in one instance it might use the front color, in another the back. Darken as you might guess does he opposite. Multiply uses the background color and multiplies it times the foreground color. This can do wonders to increase the depth of a flat image if done properly.

Each mode does something a little different. I’d recommend experimentation to see how they work. For my example I took the original picture, duplicated the layer, made a few subtle edits, and set the layer mode to multiply with a 38% opacity. I used a layer mask to keep the altered layer from darkening the shoreline, but let the multiplication effect change the rest. Notice how the color range is richer than the original?

While the change isn’t significant, you can see the potential there.

Now for adjustment layers. Again I’ll use the original image at the top as an example. Lets start with the premise that I wasn’t satisfied with the color range of the photo. I could adjust the color and saturation by working directly with the original image, but why take that risk? Instead, I use one of a number of adjustment layers. This allows me to change the hue and saturation, brightness and contrast, or a number of other attributes without risk to the original image. (Despite this safety margin, always save a copy of the original) The benefit of using adjustment layers is that it is selective. Adjustment layers use a layer mask to control where the adjustments are made. So I can make part of the photo more green and saturated, while using a second adjustment layer to make other parts lighter and less saturated.

That’s not the only benefit though. There is a bonus. Unlike adjustments directly to the primary layer, adjustment layers can be modified again later. Don’t like the hue, change it later. Don’t like the adjustment layer at all, delete it.

Most people think of PhotoShop as a huge and powerful tool, which in some ways it is. The real mastery of it though, isn’t in using it as a graphical sledgehammer. It’s in using it as a feather touch brush. Blending modes and adjustment layers are part of that feather touch. They allow the subtlest of changes, the finest of transitions. Don’t try to do too much at once. You don’t have to do everything with one layer. Add a second, or a third. Add seventeen. Use the tool as it’s meant to be used. Use the feather, not the hammer.

Modifoo has posted Over 30 things we can learn from Hollywood movies. It’s very funny. Being a graphics geek, I really can appreciate number thirty.

30. It is incredible simple to enlarge a blurry picture to reveal new details.

TV cop shows are horrible about this too. It’s amazing how they can turn six pixels worth of information from the original image into a man wearing jeans, a white shirt, blue jeans, a broken wrist watch, and white Nike shoes with the left shoe untied. Maybe if I use PhotoShop for another ten years, I’ll figure out how they do that.

Are you working in layers in PhotoShop? You should be. The best thing about digital images is that they can be edited so easily. It’s the worst thing about them too. Take a look at this picture of the beach at Patoka Lake.

If I’m editing this image, using only the default background layer in PhotoShop, and I make a mistake, what do I do? Undo is the obvious answer, but what if I’ve closed the file before I notice the mistake? That detail is lost, and it can’t be regained. Even if you’ve saved a copy of the original, you’ve lost all of the work you did on your edits.

The solution as you might have guessed, is layers. If your edits are kept on a separate layer from your original image, then you can always go back to the original. Even better, it’s often possible to edit your edits. Because they are on a separate layer than the original, they can often be fixed or otherwise edited without losing any significant work.

Why else should you work in layers? How about selective filtering? Taking the photo above as an example, how about I add a filter.

Now that looks a little too severe. If I were working on the background layer, my only choices would be to fade the effect, accept the effect as is, or undo and try again. Once I’ve continued to work, those options are no longer really available. If however I duplicate the background layer, then apply the filter to the duplicate, I have some other interesting options. Instead of fading the effect, I can just reduce the opacity of the filtered layer. By letting the unchanged background show through, this essentially lessons the effect of the filter. But wait there’s more! Not only can I lesson the opacity of the whole filtered layer, I can apply a layer mask. This will allow me to lower the opacity, or entirely mask out, specific areas of my filtered layer. The brilliant part of this is that you can go back, minutes, days, or weeks later, and change the layer mask again. See a problem later, go back and fix it… later. You’ve both modified the file, and saved the original.

The best part of this is that you can do this over and over. You can make numerous layers, each with their own small edits to the original, and each can be masked to show only what you want. Better yet, each can still be edited later. I’ll leave you with a final example. This is the original image with the filter shown above with a layer mask. I then duplicated the background layer a second time, and applied a different filter. This was in turn masked partially. If done properly, these effects can be seamlessly blended.

The original question was “are you working in layers in PhotoShop?” Hopefully now, the answer is yes.

Here’s a few pictures of my weekend traveling. Taken from the Farley Waystop on Highway 100 in Giles County. I believe it’s Walker Creek, but I’m having trouble verifying that. The map says that the convenience store I saw is the town of Bane Virginia. Now that’s a small town.

As with a lot of my photos, these have had minor edits in PhotoShop. In this case, slight adjustments to color and contrast. Nothing a good photographer couldn’t have gotten right with a camera.

Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Amboy Times, DragonLady’s World, The Populist, and Shadowscope, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I have no idea whether these Digital Photoshop Retouching Tutorial Videos are going to be any good, this is definitely not an endorsement, but the artist’s PhotoShop work is excellent. Go take a look at his work.

I linked to some of Ben Willmore’s photos a couple of days ago, but he has some more great photos of the Superstition Mountains today. He’s really on a roll this last few days. Normally I have to wait days if not weeks to hear what he’s up to.

On a side-note, he’s got a new book coming out called Photoshop CS3: Up to Speed that looks good. I haven’t moved to CS3 yet, but I try not to rush into this sort of transition too fast. I’m all for learning from the mistakes of others.

I had a very productive weekend. I got a lot of yard work done. Weeding, mowing, marked out a new garden, and hauled in three truckloads of mulch. Oh, and my wife and I dug up and I moved a little rock that’s been in our way. (For reference, that’s a two foot level on top.) This new location will put it in the new garden, so it’s gone from lawn obstacle to garden ornament.

Here’s a picture of one of my favorite plants, Hen and Chicks, growing on one of my rock walls.

This edition of the Monday Open House is now open for business.

Random bits:
BittBox has a very large set of Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes. I’ve been playing with them, they’re very slick.

A regular reader, I’ll let her identify herself if she chooses, asked me a question about background images. Since I’ve received similar questions before, I thought this would be a good forum for answering them. Here is a short list of background questions that I’ve received. I’ve taken he liberty of rewording them so that they are more generally applicable.

• Do you make your own backgrounds?
• How do you make backgrounds?
• Can you just take a picture and make it repeat with code?
• Some backgrounds are very subtle, almost invisible, how is that done?
• Can you use more than one background?

Do you make your own backgrounds?
Yes, I do all of my own backgrounds. I do all my own image work for the most part. I’m a perfectionist, and rarely satisfied with using someone else’s work. It’s not so much that I dislike the quality of work of other designers, but that their vision of a design isn’t the same as mine. By doing my own image work, I can create an image for exactly the purpose I want, rather than adjusting the design to match the image I have.

How do you make backgrounds?
Background images come in two general types, repeating and non-repeating. Repeating images are used a lot more often than people think. It can be a great way to reduce load time. Take my sidebar image for example. Every theme I’ve put together for this site in recent memory has used a repeating image to define the sidebar. One of the things to take into account with a blog design is it’s fluid nature, you never know how long the page is going to be. By using an image that repeats vertically allows me to compensate for that. The sidebar image’s repeating nature allows it to fit regardless of page length, and it loads in a fraction of the time of a longer image.

How do I make a repeating background image? Some image by their nature can repeat. For instance a solid black box could be repeated both vertically or horizontally to make a black line, or repeated both directions in order to change the background color of whole containing element. More complex repeats like the saddle texture I like to use on the left side of this site take software like PhotoShop. I first carefully select the area I wish to repeat. Don’t underestimate this step, because the smaller area you can select, the faster your page will load when you use it. Then I use a PhotoShop filter called Offset. It’s listed under the Other menu at the bottom of the Filter pull-down menu. This allows you to shift the image so that it wraps. For instance when you offset upward, the top of the image wraps around and comes up from the bottom. This doesn’t fix the seam caused by repeating an image, but it allows you to do it manually. Just make sure to offset your image in the direction it’s going to be repeated. This is where choosing your section carefully helps out. If you’ve chosen to repeat an area that has similar colors and textures, fixing the seam takes only the slightest use of a couple of key PhotoShop tools. A little Healing Brush or Clone Stamp, and the area disappears. Other image editing software can do the same work, I just happen to use PhotoShop.

How do I make a non-repeating background image? Creating background images that don’t repeat isn’t technically difficult, but it can be frustrating. What I’ve seen to be the most important question is where is it going to be placed, and in what context? As an example, let’s consider header images. If you have a fixed width site, the header width is determined by the page width. If your page width is 760 pixels, the header image you’re using either needs to be 760 pixels wide, or look appropriate in that context. Personally I prefer fluid width blog designs. This makes the header image a little more tricky since the header size isn’t constant. Any header image I use must look appropriate at any reasonable page width. I’ve recently used two different solutions. My current solution is to use four smaller images which blend into the background color that I’ve assigned my header. This allows the background to stretch or shrink, without showing image edges because the header background color fills in between them. My previous fluid blog theme used repeating texture to fill the space and the header image had a transparency to allow it to blend into the repeating pattern. These two factors gave the impression of one seamless header image, but loaded much faster.

So, how do I actually create a non-repeating background image? The key to background images in general, and non-repeating ones specifically is mostly about context. It has to fit with the rest of the page. If you’re using a fixed width page, it has to fit the space. If you’re using a fluid width page, it has to look good at various sizes or be placed in a portion of the page that doesn’t stretch. For the actual image work I use PhotoShop as I’ve mentioned before, but any image editing software could be used. The actual techniques vary dramatically. Your can fade to a background color or fade to transparency. You can extend the image to fit into a predefined space. You can adjust color or make any of thousands of other adjustments. Your techniques will be defined by the type and nature of the image needed.

A few words of warning. Always consider load time. Big images take a long time to load. Image formats that allow for transparency tend to have noticeably larger file sizes than JPEG files with similar images. So, given the choice, fading to a background color and saving as a JPEG will give you a smaller file than using transparency and saving as a GIF or PNG.

Can you just take a picture and make it repeat with code?
Of course, however using some form of image editing software and modifying the image to better suit your purpose is always a good idea. Just because you can repeat an image doesn’t mean you should.

Some backgrounds are very subtle, almost invisible, how is that done?
Subtle fades and transparencies can be done in most image editing software. Using the GIF or PNG formats, you can give a image actual transparency, letting it fade into the background of your choice. A better choice though would be to fade the image into the background color or your choice while still in the image editing software. Then you can save as a JPEG which will save you on load time. While this doesn’t allow for transparency, it give the effect of transparency, which in this context, is the same thing.

Can you use more than one background?
No… and yes. While it isn’t possible to give an HTML element two backgrounds, it is possible to make it look like you did. The trick is to use concentric DIV elements, each with their own background. This can give the visual effect of two backgrounds, or of one background larger than either individual image. As I described above, you can use one repeating element to fill the space, and one non-repeating element for visual interest. It’s a great technique, and I use it frequently.

None of the techniques I’ve described here is the perfect solution, but used together, they’ll help you find the technique that’s perfect for you.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rightlinx, A Blog For All, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, The Right Nation, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, , Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I have to admit, I chuckled when I read this story about Microsoft’s New operating system Vista in November of last year.

Apparently, Microsoft has been so focused on getting Zune out the door in time for the mad holiday rush that it hasn’t gotten around to supporting the player under its next-generation operating system. – AppleInsider

Now, while that issue has long since been resolved, a new one has come to light which involves digital images and metadata in Vista.

Vista Considered Harmful to Photographers | DSLRBlog

It turns out Windows Vista Destroys Photo Metadata. This news doesn’t add any incentive to upgrade.

Apparently if you tag a photo’s metadata in Vista, it destroys other important metadata used by image editing apps such as Photoshop.

Why does it not surprise me that Vista is a little hard on other people’s information? That Microsoft doesn’t appear to be respecting other people’s data standards?  Surely this is a mistake, because they put out great products. (They tell me this, so it must be right.) I’m sure that it will be quickly resolved, but in the meantime, photographers might want to hesitate before switching to Vista.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rightlinx, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Faultline USA, third world county, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, Stuck On Stupid, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Planet PhotoShop has a great tutorial today on making an image appear as if it’s on a textured surface. They use a brick wall on their tutorial, but most textured surfaces would work. I’ve used the individual techniques they employ before, but I’ve never seen this done quite this way before. They put the whole process, and the tutorial, together flawlessly.

Fauxtography: How mad are your skills? Allahpundit got:

Nine out of ten, baby. Nine. Out of. Ten.

Nine out of ten for me too. I’m curious how my photographer readers do… Leave your score in my comments please.

I contributed a little PhotoShop humor over at Argghhh! this morning. John supplied the original image, I added the tutu and the sword of course. I thought it came out nicely.

I was just about to post this, and I see that the image is posted at Villainous Company too.

OK, somebody has a copy of PhotoShop and a lot of time on their hands. When cloning goes wrong.

In an interesting turn, two young woman who’s photos were altered to look like Michelle Malkin are trying to get several popular websites to publish retractions, or at least take down the photos. Not surprisingly, at least to me, they’re not having any luck.

Michelle Malkin: College student slams Gawker Media

Those images were falsely publicized last week by UNC School of Law professor Eric Muller as authentic, and then picked up and broadcast widely by the Gawker Media smear machine. Last week, Ashley wrote both the Wonkette and Gawker editors informing them of how her photos were manipulated and requesting that they tell their readers what actually happened. Her requests, like mine, have been ignored.

If enough of us post about this, maybe we can help. By “us” of course I mean all of you with sites that people actually read.

Michelle Malkin has been the victim of a poorly done PhotoShop fraud. It’s a shame when political discourse sinks to this level. Oh, I’m not above an image spoof, I’ve even done one of Ms. Malkin, but I try to keep them humorous, and I always identify them in some way (sometimes subtly) as altered files.

h/t Hot Air