Getting acquainted with Photoshop

Now for that second picture, "What Lies Beneath", again with the help of Heidi. I told her what I wanted to do and she said 'No problem'. Well, on the positive side, I have to conclude that it is good that one of us is optimistic. I'm just enthusiastic, that doesn't guarantee success. But, on the other hand: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill.

This picture required two pictures merged in Photoshop. I had followed Heidi work with Photoshop earlier, so I knew that it was probably doable, but of course I checked with Heidi first. As I understand it, you can do almost anything in Photoshop, even create new stuff if you want to. You can correct mistakes you make when taking photographs, adjust lights and so on, but it is sometimes very time consuming. So, the better the picture you have to work with, the faster you get it done. Same thing as everywhere else, good preparations will get you a better result.

Again that &/)%#¤% background! And the lights! And the ISO and everything else! And now also something called 'overexposure' to worry about. It's when the picture gets too much light, it has blown-out highlights, so that's when you need to change the settings on your camera. I find that a little bit hard to comprehend, the previous education I received on the subject involved the use of a dark room and a bunch of chemical liquids that we (students) were not allowed to touch. No, I'm not old, the educational system was out-of-date. Or old-fashioned/devoted/genuine/[insert desired description here].

Lena took a seat and we got some really nice pictures. After dealing with the supposed overexposure, that is. (Yes, I did see it in the camera view. It flashes horribly black!) For the second picture, we took a scull and positioned it in about the same place as Lena's head in the previous picture. This to get the lights to work in the same way on both pictures. According to Heidi that is a good thing. I believe her.

Now for the photo-shopping. I use the Heidi.1 version of Photoshop myself, it's easy to use, really works well and above all, it's voice activated. Usually it comes with chocolate too. And at least one cat.

As I told you before, I like watching Heidi work with Photoshop. She makes it look so easy. She took both pictures, used a lasso tool on the scull, cutting of everything she didn't need, moved it to the Lena picture, adjusted the size and then made it transparent. Then she inverted the whole thing and started erasing the transparency to get the effect of a scull glowing through. Piece of cake. Or, at least so I'm told, I'm still looking for said cake.

Well, pretty nice result, I have to say. And the satisfaction of seeing your idea come to life? Priceless. I can live on this for at least a couple of weeks. (No, I won't throw the refrigerator out.)

"What Lies Beneath"