Major Project... Feeling Squirrelly - Getting to know Photoshop - ONLY Photoshop

Taming the Inner Squirrels... and Playground Ruffians...
and other Photoshop Adventures

OK.  Time for some alteration on the "Master Plan" here.  Because Adobe products are so immersive and capable of so much, I will devote the entirety of this project to Photoshop. Since I will be taking an Independent Study this summer for learning more kid-friendly computer design programs to incorporate into my Art Ed curriculum, I'd rather know one program really well for now, rather than barely grasping 3 different ones. It's been too overwhelming, because every time I'm struggling with the Photoshop part, there's a naggy little voice in the back of my head going "Just wait until you get in to Illustrator, sucker!  You don't even know what a vector really is! Mwahaha..."  Or something like that.  My inner voice can be a jerk sometimes. 

But instead of listening to the evil squirrel, I think I'll let my more zen inner voice come to the surface.  The one who says it is better to do one thing really well than to knock myself out trying to do too many things adequately.  In a week where I am trying to work at my job, write a massive term paper, navigate final group projects, take care of all the other little assignments tossed in there, throw my daughter a birthday party with 40 people, take her to the doctor's because not only is she having minor surgery after her birthday - but some frisky little toddler bit her face on the jungle gym because she wouldn't kiss him. No joke. Bit. Her. Face. I know this is not related at all to the task at hand, but it's my blog and I can talk about whatever I want. BIT.  HER.  FACE!!!  In her haste to get away from the little monster, she tripped and scraped her knee and scratched her nose pretty bad. Now she has scratches, bite marks, bruises, and an unrelated bug bite.  All in time for lots and lots of birthday photos. Fantastic.  But hey... and here's where we get back on track... I'll know how to Photoshop all that crap right off of her. It's good to be techy! 

So today I decided to research exactly what "Layer Masks" are.  For that giant term paper I mentioned (my reflections on my first semester of field experience), I'd had to alter a few photos I'd taken of handouts and art projects.  They were all slightly skewed pictures because of the distortion that happens when you don't photograph head-on.  I messed around with the Transform tools until I found "Warp" to be very helpful and now you'd never know the images in my paper aren't scans of handouts in my possession. As I was testing methods out for fixing the perspective, I keep coming across items about Layers... Adjustment Layers, Fill Layers, Layer Style, Layer Masks...  I could figure out what most of them do, but I wasn't sure about the Masks.  So I found a helpful little tutorial: Adobe Help for Layer Masks.  Apparently, I'm in a bit of a squirrel mood - perhaps the threat of "baby-rabies" my daughter could have caught has me fearing rodents... I don't know.  But I decided to experiment a little with clipping masks. 

   

  

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Here is my quick product.  Not spectacular, and a lot could be cleaned up... the Squirrelzilla destruction intensified... but I just wanted to experiment.  This has nothing to do with cupcakes or parties.  But I'm tired of looking at cupcakes and parties - between this project and planning a 2nd birthday - I'm partied out already.  So I've stooped to squirrels.  Oh well, it did the job.

I have yet to "film" my screen activity because my methods are still so sloppy, and no one wants to watch me stumble through a demonstration... so I'm building up a little more expertise.  Thus these little experiments.  I've decided I like layer masks because instead of cutting the material from one layer that you don't anticipate not needing, you are just blocking them from view and you could make them visible again quite easily if you misjudged what you wanted hidden from view.  This would have come in handy doing the dozens of "head-swaps"  I did in group photos for the wedding photographer I worked for. There's always that blinky uncle in the back row who needs to be photographically decapitated and reassembled with functional eyes.  The masking tool could make for a really seamless swap.  Very cool.  Maybe I wasn't "nuts" doing this project after all.  

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.  Just feeling squirrelly I guess.