Final Assignment - Magazine Cover

This is my final project, a magazine cover. The graphic is a composite of my husband's hand holding some carrots from the farmer's marked and some farm land on Hawaii. I used a variety of selection and masking techniques to combine the images, and used a very subtle blur/gradient for the background (depth of field). I had fun deciding where to place the cover lines and how to color them so they were legible.

Assignment 14 - Pop Dots

Here is a graphic using the pop dot technique. The photo was taken during the Tour of California in 2010 when they passed through the area on Sierra Road.

Assignment 13 - Depth of Field

Here is a simple image I edited to make the bird appear in-focus while the rest is out of focus, to create depth.

Assignment 12 - Masks

These two of the tutorials on masks, using the book's graphics. Click on them to view the detail.

Assignment 11 - Plugins

I used Extract plugin from the Adobe website to take the zebra from a photo I took at the Oakland Zoo. I like that you can trace part of the image and have the freedom to stop, erase, and start adding to the 'selection' more easily than with other selection tools because it is simply highlighting parts of the image you want to include. It feels a lot like using a paintbrush/fill tool in a mask but allows you to skip the actual masking process. For this assignment, I also attempted to download other plugins from the internet. The one I chose (http://www.cybia.co.uk/theworks.html) had an .exe installer (which I wasn't thrilled about) but it passed my antivirus software and everything seems to work great. To finish my graphic, I adjusted the levels, used the burn and dodge tools, and made some other adjustments. I painted the grass in with one of the brushes.

Assignment 10 - Surreal

This is an image I made in an attempt at creating something surreal. My original stars had wings, and I even tried putting wings on my frog but in the end I liked the way it came out this way. I used the pen tool to trace my frog, and created a custom shape out of him. I also created the original star using the pen tool and defining it as a custom shape.

Here is my original photo that I traced with the pen tool:

Assignment 8 - Photo Retouch

This is a picture of my girls from 2009. The quality and lighting of the photo weren't very good, so I adjusted the levels, used the burn, dodge, sponge, red eye and heal tools, and painted a little.