I have been experimenting with photo manipulation, using PhotoShop, for the past few years; and think I am finally getting the hang of it.
- If you can't afford to buy a copy of PhotoShop, then get yourself a copy of Paint.NET, an excellent (and 'free') Photoshop-like application.
- Having experimented with a range of 'lightbox' applications, I have now settled on once called "prettyPhoto", which you can download NO-MARGIN-FOR-ERRORS.com.
Mike Jackson (OBE) stepped down, in April 2011, after 11+ years as Dean of the Hull University Business School.
To mark this event, I thought it might be 'nice' to overlay Mike's face on one of the iconic Heads,
which, for the
past few years, have welcomed all visitors to the Business School. An interesting challenge;
however, one
that I feel that my burgeoning PhotoShop skills have, more than adequately, allowed me to achieve.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) images combine a minimum of three photographs; one that is 'correctly exposed', one that
is 'under exposed' (to enhance detail in areas that were too bright), and one that is 'over exposed' (to enhance detail in
areas that were too dark). The resulting HDR image (produced in this case using
Dynamic-Photo HDR), evens out the
lighting across the whole dynamic range. NB. my example looks OK; however, HDR images can be pushed to extremes,
to produce stunning results, as can be seen from this
search of Google Images, for "Examples of HDR Photography".
The easy part of this Photo Restoration was the scanning, conversion to B&W,
straightening & cropping; and
then the hard work began; i.e. removing the
writing, rebuilding the base of the doll, and restoring the fabric of the
dress; most of which was
achieved by judicious, but very time consuming, use of Photoshop's Clone-stamp tool.
Another B&W photo, 'enhanced' with colour on separate layers; all, except the
last layer,
have their mode set to 'Overlay' and their
opacity reduced to '30%'.
This dull/flat B&W photo was first 'enhanced' with a bit of colour, then made
more 'dramatic'
using the very useful (and free, and easy to use)
Virtual Photographer
plug-in for Photoshop.
Visit Lunacore, and have a go at their excellent 'Beautify a Face' Tutorial.
Visit DevelopingWebs, for a simple, but effective, 'Painting B&W Photos' Tutorial.