HOW TO MATCH COLOR USING PHOTOSHOP CS

Last week, while perusing the blogosphere, I came upon James Delaney's website that showed how to use this fun Photoshop feature I wanted to share. This feature is only available in the CS versions of Photoshop and was created to match a series of photographs with each other.
But look at what else you can do.





















I started with this ho-hum photograph of the Mad River, which flows parallel to the Pacific not far from where I live
























I found this painting online, Sailing Under the Rain, by Yoiche Tanabe. I liked it for its mood and colors.

Here are the steps:

• Make sure both images are the same dimension
• Make sure the image of River is active by clicking on it
• Go to Image>Adjustments>Match Color
• Under Image Statistics, choose Sailing Under the Rain as the source image

• Fiddle with Luminance and Color Intensity sliders

More experiments:

























Georgia O'Keeffe From the Lake




























One of my mandalas, cropped.

















































Have fun!

DIGITAL PLAY PART 3

I am departing today from my usual topics to show you the fun I had noodling around for Rima's Digital Play Challenge #3. We started with this image from wetcanvas and were instructed to have fun. How often do we hear that in our lives anymore?



End of Summer - digital photomontage
© Sue O'Kieffe 2007
Starting image + sunflower photo I took, layer mask, filters: cutout (artistic), photocopy (sketch). I will write about layer masks on Sunday for my photoshop tips

Summer Sunset Mandala
© Sue O'Kieffe 2007
Blend of two mandalas made from the starting image and the sunflower photograph, layer mask, photocopy filter on duplicate layer of bathing beauty mandala

Solar Print - digital image
© Sue O'Kieffe 2007
Above mandala image using exclusion filter, placed on separate background with blue stroke on separate layer

I hope you will go see how all artists participating interpreted this challenge by visiting the gallery wall here!

DIGITAL MATTING

Soothing Star Mandala - (Winter Series) - © Sue O'Kieffe 2006

It is Sunday and time for my weekly photoshop tips. I was going to write about quick masks today, but I have discovered that the procedure has changed in the latest version of CS3. Ah, the never ending learning curve. More on quick masks at a later date.

So instead I thought I would show you a way to create an extended layer of color around an image -- what I think of as digital matting, by showing you a nifty trick with the crop tool -- (one that I personally can't live without!)

~ Create a new layer and fill it with white (edit>fill>white)

~ Turn on rulers (view>rulers). Select crop tool and run it around the layer filled in white. Extend the sides of the crop tool markings 1/4" each side and hit enter. The white layer will look like this:

~ You can see there is a 1/4" transparency where the dimensions of this layer have been extended. Once again fill this layer with white (edit>fill>white) . The big concept here, of course, is that you can fill this layer with the color of your choice, if you dont want to use white.

~ Reverse the layer order in the layers palette so the white layer is on the bottom.
There are other ways in Photoshop to extend the size of a canvas, but this is the easiest way I have found with less math involved. That, for me, is good enough reason right there!

~ And here is the finished image. For demonstration purposes I added a 3 px black stroke (line) around the white layer (edit>stroke>black).

Did you find this helpful? Be sure and let me know!