Blurring the Edges
Woke up to a little bit of yayness this morning :D
The pic will be up in the Fishy Strawberry main shop for a month, ty Fae and Johnny!
I have seen other pics altered in photoshop with various highlighting and blurring tools, to be able to draw the focus on the subject. Here I used a the blur brush to darken the (amazing) items in the shop in the foreground. Ya thinking about it now, usually the background is blurred, but it’s technique in any case to be discussed here ;-)
1. To Blur
- Make a layer with a copy of the background by selecting the layer and dragging it to the copy layer er button (second from the right on the bottom of the layer window). BTW, if you click that button you get a new alpha layer (ya I just learned that…I said I was a newb)
- Select the blur tool from the tool menu (in the same section as the brush tool, looks like a teardrop)
- Change the brush size and effects on the top of the window. In this pic I used a darkening effect with 50% strength to blur the left side of the pic
- Swipe over areas you want blurred. You can probably use a selection tool to be more accurate…I just get selection lazy :)
2. To Darken Edges of a Pic (the pic uploaded above does not have this effect)
***You use the Burn tool to darken, Dodge tool to lighten***
- Select the burn tool from the tools menu (same section as the brushes and blur, looks like a little pin)
- Change the brush size and effects on the top of the window
- Brush over the edges and areas to darken. I just practiced on the pic after I uploaded to change some of the shading to the right of the pic, to draw more attention to the ad
Managing Color and Fishy Strawberries
The physical act of opening my PS for Dummies book makes me sleepy. So decided today to work on an entry for the Fishy Strawberry Flickr contest!
I used this cool color scheme website that helped me plan the pic (loosely). I wanted to pic colors that matched the mood and style of Fishy Strawberry…something fun and lively!
Won’t go through all I did to make this pic, but a technique used is described below…
1. Replacing Colors in a Pic
- Use the select tool to make marching ants around the area you are working with in the pic
- Select Image > Adjustment > Replace Color
- You will get a eyedropper tool in the pic, use to select the color you want to replace
- In the bottom of the Replace Color gui, you can select the color you want to change to. In this pic, I wanted my selections to be black, so I just reduced the lightness
- You can replace more than one color in a pic by holding down the shift key while selecting the color you want to change with the eyedropper
