Blending Photo

What I did here was I opened the picture of the girl blowing on the dandelion into its own page and then loaded the rest of the pictures onto that one. After resizing them to the appropriate size, I turned off the layer holding the grass picture. I then added a layer mask to the dandelions picture, selected the gradient tool, and chose a linear, foreground-into-background style of gradient fade. Using the gradient tool, I clicked and dragged a short distance from the dandelion on the left to a space near it, all while holding shift, in order to bring about the gradient effect into the girl picture and the dandelion picture. After doing so, I turned on the spring background picture layer and did the same thing I did with the other two pictures, except I clicked and dragged my cursor vertically instead of horizontally two fade it into the other two pictures. In the process of all this, I learned something really useful, being that if you want to add another gradient fade somewhere else on the picture without getting rid of an existing one, you have to change the gradient style from foreground-to-background to a foreground-to-transparent kind of style. Doing so allows one two put in as many other gradient fades as they wish because instead of the layer mask going from white to black, black being the part that's already shaded, the fade will go from a white color to no color at all, allowing whatever we don't want covered  to not be at all.

Gold Text Effect

What I did here was I first made a new 640 pixel x 480 pixel document and filled the background layer with black. I then typed in "Gold" in a white color in Times New Roman and had to resize the word to the appropriate dimensions. After doing so, I duplicated the text layer and added a gradient overlay onto the duplicated text copy. I then went into the gradient color option box and chose a lighter to darker gradient fade for the text. After changing the gradient style to "Reflected", I went into the bevel and emboss option box to change the technique to "Chisel Hard", the gloss contour to "Ring Double", changed the structure size to make the "open" areas of the effect go away, and finally the depth to enhance the lighting effect. After that, I checked the "Contour" option and added an "Inner Glow", changing the blend mode to multiply, lowering the opacity to 50%, selecting an orange color for the glow, and finally increasing the glow size to 15 pixels. With that being done, a stroke was added to the outside of the word. I changed the structure size to 5 pixels, the fill type to gradient, and changed the style to "Reflected" so I could finally add the same color I used on the text to the stroke. After, again, adding the bevel and emboss option to the stroke, this time with the style being changed to "Stroke Emboss", the technique to "Chisel Hard", the size to 5 pixels, and the gloss contour to "Ring Double", and checking the Contour option below the words "Bevel and Emboss", I applied an outer glow to the effect, complete with the opacity at 50%, the color to an orange color, and the size to 29 pixels.For the last and final step, I made a new blank layer over the text copy layer and loaded up the assorted brushes. I eye-dropped a light gold color from the text after replacing the current brushes and, by choosing a "Crosshatch" brush to use as a sparkle, I mixed a few sparkles here and there to make the text almost shine, but at the same time, lowering the opacity to how I think looked the best and thus, the final product was born.

Grid Work

What I did here was I first set a grid on the 1000 x 1000 pixel document. I then proceeded to use the rectangular marquee tool to select a large area of the document, leaving only two squares from the edge of the document left. After filling the selection with black, I deselected the outside of the square and started selecting areas on the inside. I selected a rectangular shape that was 10 squares away from the edges, going vertically. I did the same thing again but this time horizontally. I then repeated the same shapes twice, going vertically again then back to horizontal. After doing so, I deleted the areas selected to reveal the white areas behind them, bringing to life the shapes I desired. Then, I added a drop shadow layer effect behind the shapes to make them look more authentic. Finally, I chose the photo I wanted to use and resized it in order to fit the entirety of the various shapes.

Light Bursting Effect

What I did here was I first typed in the words, then rasterized the type layer then I saved it as a selection and then saved that selection as a channel. After doing so, I applied a Gaussian blur effect onto the image after filling the background with white and turning off the background layer. Then came a solarize filter, then I lightened the image with an auto tone as I duplicated the layer. Next, I rotated the image 90 degrees clockwise after applying yet another filter, this time a polar coordinates filter. I inverted that image to make the inside and outside of the letters all white with black tracing. On the next step, I applied a wind filter three times and inverted it back to black on the inside, and applied the same filter three more times after rotating it back to its horizontal phase.  After re-applying the polar coordinates filter, I had to change the layer blend mode to screen so that the letters would be more noticeable and after doing so, I added a gradient fill layer to the layer and picked colors that would flow into each other and all I had to do after that was change the fill layer's blend mode to color. I then converted the original layer into a smart object and applied a radial blur effect onto the image. Finally, I added a new layer above the original background layer and loaded the selection I had saved from earlier onto that final layer. I then filled that entire selection with black, thus producing the final image we have here.

Lady in Red Dress

What I did here was I gave the original layer an adjustment layer of black and white, but not before i made the background layer into duplicate layers first. Then, after selecting the layer mask, I took the went over only the red dress but in the middle of all the parts of the dress. I then went back over the parts I painted over to ensure it looked dark enough before going over the edges with a more smaller but harder brush. I then changed the levels of the red to make sure the image looked exactly as I wanted it to.

Worn and Torn Photo

What I did here was I first duplicated the background layer into two, then I selected the rough round brush and made it really soft. I then used that soft brush to work my way around the picture to give it a torn kind of effect. After doing so, I went back around again to not only give it more of a torn look, but to make it look old and faded. Finally, I touched up some spots all around the picture to make it look even more authentic than it already was.

My First Group Project

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