Homework for 2-1-12: Tools

Tools Palette Customization: This allows you to change the what tools you want to show as well as the ordering and grouping of the tools. You can do it by going to preferences > Tools.

Burn Tool: It allows you to darken parts of your image, while keeping the photo natural. You can adjust the strength, size and whether it affects the highlights, mid tones or shadows.

Sponge Tool: This one just allows you to saturate or desaturate parts of your image. It can be helpful for naturally bringing out or not certain colors of the picture.

Clone Stamp: You can take a sample from part of your image and essentially stamp it in another place with this tool. With it you can retouch images by taking out or adding things to the picture. 

Versions: This one is really cool because if you make a mistake which a simple "command-Z" can not fix you can use this tool. It keeps ever different version of your image and lets you access all of them in a timeline, then you can just pick the one you want to restore your image to.

Full Screen: The title discribes this one. It just lets you edit and use in pixelmator with full screen.

Auto Save: Again, the title discribes what this tool does. Pixelmator will auto save all of your work so you don't have to manually press "command-S" every now and then. 

Getting Pixelmator: This one isn't really a tool, but just how to get Pixelmator. You can buy it in the Mac App Store and it will download to your applications folder.

Dodge Tool: This is the opposite of the burn tool. The Dodge tool allows you too brighten specific parts of your image Again, with it you can choose to adjust the highlights, mid tones and shadows. 

Smudge Tool: This one I find really cool and helpful. What you can do with it is smear parts of the image to make it look smoother. 

Heal Tool: I really wish I had this tool for the assignment last week and I think its pretty cool looking. It is essentially a large clone stamp tool and it seems to work seamlessly so you can take out large or small parts of you picture. 

Eyedropper Tool: With this you can sample a certain color from your picture. With that color you can then go on and paint.

Red Eye Tool: This is a pretty simple tool. All it does is get rid of the red eye which sometimes happens when taking a picture with flash. It will automatically fix it or you can manually by using the tool over the eye. 

Layer Group: This tool allows you to group certain layers to make them easier to manage. Once you have them as a group you can edit them as if they were a single group. 

Crop Tool: Like a normal cropping tool this one just allows you to crop out different parts of an image. When you are copping, the tool also uses lines to show the rule of thirds. 

Exporting Images: To export an image go to file>export. From there you can choose which type of format you want and then just click "export". 

Opening Images: There are a few different ways to open an image in pixelmator. The first is to just go in to file>open and choose the correct photo. Another is to just drag an image from your desktop straight into the pixelmator app in your dock. 

Polygonal Lasso Tool: With this you can just select parts of your image using straight lines. To use it just open it in the tools palette and start clicking to make the points for your selection.

Magic Wand Tool: You can select the backgrounds of images with this tool. Just select it and use it by clicking and dragging outward 

Marquee Tool: With this one you can select round areas of your picture. It can be good for selecting eyes, balls or really anything roundish. 

Lasso Tool. Like the "Polygonal Lasso Tool". Although, with this one you can select freely, instead of just using straight lines for selection. It can be good for choosing parts of the image which are more gagged and rough.

Gradient Tool: You can create a gradient from one color to another with this. You can do a variety of different gradients with it, like from the center out, diagonal, side to side, etc. 

Remove Backgrounds: You can do this by using the magic eraser tool. This can be helpful if you just want a single object without any kind of background.

-Grant William Howard Snodgrass

 

Homework for 2-1-12: Response to Article

      I found it was pretty sad how meny of these "10 Deadly Post Processing Sins" related to things I have done in the past and now. I think I am bit by bit getting better at not completely overdoing and changing my images in post processing, but I still have so much to learn. This article highlighted some of the things I know now are good to stay away from. So for the most part I agreed with everything which was said in the post.
      I think the ones which most related to the assignment we had last week were #3 and #4. These said to make sure not to over define the eyes and not to make the make the skin so it looks like plastic or overly smooth. This is something we all had some trouble with this last week. 
      The other thing the article talked about in #4 which I thought was interesting was talking about not taking away cretin blemishes in the skin. What he said was sometimes the client dosen't want some scars or moles taken away and to make sure to ask the person when you do. I think this sometimes doesn't apply, in the case of small zits and such, but I do think it is interesting and good to be sensitive to what the subject wants.




-Grant William Howard Snodgrass

Homework for 1-25-11

Before:

After:

Response to Article:

      This video/article was so helpful to me, I can't imagen even attempting to do this project without it. The main thing I learned which I did not know before was about the masks and how that all works. I would have never thought that blurring the skin and making it show though with a mask would make the sink appear smoother. I have to admit when I first saw the part about the mask it really didn't make to much sense, but I think it pretty much does now. Just even that tool I will use later, not only in just portrait editing, but in other projects in pixelmator as well. 

      Something else I learned from this was just how much you can change or "cheat" with editing. Sure, you have to have the right composition of the image and such, but I never realized how much you can take a image with unbalance colors, over exposure or other things and change it in editing.  

-Grant W.H. Snodgrass 

  

Homework for 1-18-11: Edited Portrait Photos

Shadows: 

This one was a little hard for me because the camera I was using 

did not adjust to the dark very well, so that made it hard to get

the image I wanted right. With lots of editing the picture became

brighter and was easier to see. I know this is far from perfect, but

it is sort of the vision I had for the picture. 

Un-Focused:

I am actually quite happy with the finished product of this image.

Again it is not perfect, but I think it captures the technique of "Un-Focused" 

that I read from the article. My original vision for this was to have the 

subject leaning on the fence and for the focus to be on the fence. However,

it ended up that the focus was on the other side of the fence and I think

it turned out ok. 

Posing:

My vision was for the subject to kind of be sitting on the bench,

thinking and looking in the distance. Based on that I think it

turned out ok, but I wish her face was more in focus. I also, regret

not putting more of the bench in the frame.   

Get Close:

Obviously, the idea of this technique was for the image to be

pretty close up. Now, I guess this is fairly close. I think the photo

turned out ok, I like how the "Rule of Thirds" has played in here

and the main subject is off to one side, rather than just flat down

in the middle. Although, I do wish because she has such pretty eyes 

that her eye would be more in focus and pop more. 

-Grant William Howard Snodgrass

Homework for 1-18-11: Response to Article

      I have to go be honest, before reading this I would have never known there were so many different techniques to taking portrait photographs. I knew that, obviously portrait photography was pictures of people, but this article kinda broke it down in a simple way, that was easy to understand, with the example picture and the short explication to go along with it. 
      I found that, because the article was so easy to comprehend that made it easier to take what I learned from it and go apply it to the photos I went and took. In fact I think some of the examples might have given me some inspiration for my representation on the technique. I think if I do more portrait photography in the future, I can kinda relate back to this article. 


- Grant William Howard Snodgrass 

Homework for 1-11-12 (Paragraph)

What I learned form this assignment:


I think the biggest thing I learned from this assignment was that you don't have to change the picture in a really huge way to change how the photo feels. I used to think "ok, I'm going to completely mess up this photo and edit it in a really weird way to change it", but I think now I realize more that just changing a few things can make the photo really great. So I think this assignment has helped me realize that more. 


-Grant Will-i-am Howard Snodgrass

Homework for 1-11-12

- Grant William Howard Snodgrass

Pictures over Christmas break: Part 2

-Grant William Howard Snodgrass 

Pictures over Christmas break: Part 1

- Grant William Howard Snodgrass

Response to: "5 Steps to Better Composition"

    Composition is a subject that I really haven't thought much of until reading this. Before, when I took pictures I would just kind of place the different objects where ever and hope it looked okay. Now the writer talked a lot about "The rule of thirds" in this and how not to always stick with it. I have heard of the rule before, but haven't really thought about it.
    I really like step 4 in this. I never really knew that simple lines could do so much. But after looking at the example picture it really made sense how lines can add so much dimension. Also I thought step 3 was helpful too. Step three talked about simplifying as much as possible and that is something I struggle with. When I take pictures I want to try and get everything in the frame, but this helped me realize that its better to have a smaller amount of things in the frame and have the picture look better. Then to try and have everything in focus and have the image more shallow. 


-Grant William Howard Snodgrass 

Response to: "A 15 minute lesson for The Photographer Beginner"

I found this article really helpful. It was short, but sweet. I thought it was really cool how the writer put the whole lesson in the form of a story. If a article is just things to do and not to do I don't tend to connect with it as much. So I thought the way the author gave examples with different pictures to go along with them!
After reading this aperture made a lot more sense to me. How the greater the "f number" made more stuff is in focus. It was really cool seeing in the example pictures how just raising the aperture can make a huge difference. If everything was in focas, although more things could be seen and such, the photo to me seemed very shallow and boring. 
I think this will help me in my photography in the future, because it helped me realize more of what is more interesting to to look at and how to give my pictures a little more depth. 


-Grant William Howard Snodgrass