Photoshop

Clifford, the Big Red Dog

That is not actually the dog’s real name.  However, my neighbor’s were kind enough to let me snap a few photo’s of them one fine Saturday morning. 

This photo focuses on the use of Photoshop.  In this unit I learned about many different tools of Photoshop.  I learned how to make something look fish eye.  I learned how to blend images.  I learned how to make an images look as if it is a reflection on the water. I learned how to so much more than I had before.

In this photo I used the threshold tool and a few artistic filters.  Fist, always, always, always duplicate the background shot.  Then the fun begins to make this yellow lab red.  The image was coppiced and the dog was selected with the wand tool.  Then, the background was deleted from that layer.  After, that layer is duplicated about 12 times.  From there, the threshold was adjusted to various levels on each layer making sure that each layer was darker than the previous.  Following, the color was adjusted from dark to light through the layers.  As soon as this was completed, I merged the layers to clean up the mess and merge the layers. 

After completing this central part of the image, I played with various filters and adjustments to alter the photograph.  After going through many filters I decided I would keep the combination of two different filters to pick from.  I chose a mezzotint which has given the picture a noisy feel to it.  Then I added a filter called minimum, which cased the image to be darker.  I decided to go along with this change because I feel that this enhanced the photo and aloud the dog to stand out more.

In this unit, Photoshop has been the core.  I used to believe that Photoshop was only for those who were rich and famous.  It allowed them to alter the photo to make the movie starts look perfect all the time.  Now, I know that Photoshop can be used to alter photos to look more real or unreal depending upon t the desired outcome.