:) Fresh Start

This lesson, I had my picture (of me looking serious):

and followed the tutorial on how to make myself look frozen. I rubbed out the bits of hair sticking out because it would be too hard for me to make them look frozen and separate from the background. By the end of the lesson, I had rubbed myself out and created a new layer for curves to make myself look dimmer. 

I worked on it last night also (using the photoshop trial version) and when I got to the part where it said that I had to use the 'frost brush'. I didn't know how to change the brush style so I searched online and found the 'brush presets' list. I looked through and the 'frost brush' was nowhere to be seen. I went back to the tutorial and it had a link to download the brush so I downloaded it and, by the end of the night, I was left with this:

:(

Alright, so this lesson, I got my picture, cut around the head and placed it not the background that I made last lesson. As you can see, it looks very unrealistic and because the picture was too much of a closeup, I didn't really have much of a upper body to work with.

So, I searched on the internet and found a tutorial (the link is in the final evaluation) and I'm going to retake the photo of myself.

(I don't know what's happening with my eyes as the corners of them look on here but on photoshop it looked fine :/)

Change of Idea...

Ok, so at the start of this lesson, I opened up my background and tried to put myself into it. Only then did I realise that the whole thing just....didn't look right.

1. The background was....weird
2. The picture shouldn't have been landscape because if I were to only fit the top half of my body in, it wouldn't take up all the space and thus would lead the whole thing looking weird .... again
3. I shouldn't have liquified the picture last week, instead, I should have put the picture in then liquify the picture

Those are the reasons why I decided to change my reason ^^ apart from the fact that I just didn't think it looked right. Oh, and also, the background didn't look realistic so I decided to use a picture of real snow...at first, it didn't work because all the pictures on the internet had borders and watermarks on them and you had to pay to get ones without the watermark and tab. I was a bit disappointed but then I realised I could actually take the picture and use photoshop to remove the tab and marks, either use the clone tool or masking (rubbing out the watermark area and replacing it with a clear part from a duplicate of the picture).

I downloaded the picture and put it into photoshop and cropped away the tab. I clicked on the watermark and it got selected, so I pressed 'delete' and it came up with this little tab, I clicked 'enter' and the watermark just disappeared!!! Like, the watermark got taken off and the snow underneath was still there!!!! I have no idea what that function is but I love it :)

I just went onto photoshop to try and find out what the function is but unfortunately, for some reason I can't find it....I have no idea why....

Before:

After:

Making the Background - 2

This lesson, I continued working on my background. My friend, Eliza looked at my background and sad that I should add some effects to the flames. So I experimented with different effects and at the end this one worked really well since the tone kind of matches the ice. After that, I asked Mr Powell how I could make it look like that the ice was melting. He played around for a while before telling me that liquify was probably the best option. So for the rest of the lesson, I used a small brush and tried to melt the ice as realistic as possible.

Making the Background

Ok, so last lesson I found the pictures for my assignment this lesson, I went to put the pictures together. After putting the ice picture:

as the background, I imported the flame picture and put it ontop of the ice. I dragged it to the bottom and the flames only lined up about half of the background because it was too thin to cover the whole thing. I tried to solve it by duplicating the image and putting the two flames together to create a longer one but when I duplicated, the second version of the flames kept on going to another layer which made the process difficult since it was difficult to position the flames in the right place. I asked Mr Powell to show me and he taught me a trick that was really cool, basically, what you do is first you put the pictures together then you merge them so they become one picture. I did what he showed me and this is what I had by the end of the lesson:

Here is a rose I edited for my mum's birthday:

Getting Started!

Finally I got started on my semi-new idea today!

So after last lesson, I had a thought about my idea and decided that I wanted to keep the 'whole' ice idea but change some aspects of it. Instead of putting myself into/onto and iceberg, I am going to put me into ice. I want to take a picture of my face melt it into the surface of ice so it looks like I'm trapped below the surface. Then, after that, I want to line flames up at the bottom of the picture and make the ice look like it was melting by using liquify. Afterwards, I would rub the area of the picture above the flames out using 20-30% opacity and flow, raising both by 10% the further I rub up the picture. This is symbolizing that the ice is melting and revealing my true personality. It doesn't necessarily mean that I have a 'fake' surface, it just means that sometimes I may seem a way on the outside but is actually feeling another way inside.

So, I did some searching on the internet to put myself behind and didn't really find suitable pictures; some of the ones I found were alright but none were perfect for my idea:

After searching for 'snow caves' or 'snow', I resorted to searching 'ice background textures' and found this ^^ picture and the picture below. I debated on which one to use and decided to use the blue one because I think it looks better and will probably have a better effect in the overall design.

Next, I tried to find pictures of flames that I could place at the bottom of the ice picture ^^ to make it look like it's burning..... the choices were limited since most of the flames were either full screen or looked fake. In the end, I found this one:

Change of Idea - Again....

So, it was our second lesson on our assignment today and at first, I was really excited since I finished the iceberg last lesson and was keen to get working on it.

I left the photo myself at home so I fished a picture of Taylor Swift off the internet and attempted to add her to the iceberg. As soon as I imported her into the iceberg background, I realized that the picture just wouldn't work because the picture itself was too big and the iceberg too small, thus Taylor isn't particularly visible and - how do I explain - it just didn't look right.

Finished Iceberg

I managed to finish my iceberg this lesson by making the colour above the surface vibrant and the colour below the surface dull. Making the colour vibrant was actually pretty difficult since the original picture was very gloomy so I had to single the sky out and overlay it with a 'sky blue' picture because colourising and changing the hue and saturation didn't look very real.

I then had to rub out the top part of the water so I could change the colour below the surface of the water, in the end, I finished in the nick of time.

Before:

After:

Change of Idea

I decided to search for a picture of a cave behind a waterfall that would suit my idea but after searching and searching and searching, I couldn't find the right picture to edit. Nothing seemed right to be used in my edit since they were all very hard pictures to incorporate myself into.

"Think, which place would you most want to be right now?" This is what Mr Powell said during the lesson and thanks to him, I thought about Antarctica and the Arctic since I love the cold and ice/snow. I thought about a picture that I've seen of an iceberg that seems really small above the water but actually really big under the water. This image then led me to realise that an iceberg would actually fit my edit pretty well since it could math with the waterfall idea; calm and small on the outside but deep and dark on the inside. 

I found this picture of the iceberg:

and had the idea to change everything above the water into colour but everything below the surface into black and white to further portray my idea.

I started my edit this lesson and rubbed out most of the sky before we had to pack up:

Finished Waterfall!

Today, I finally finished the waterfall edit that I started making a couple of lessons ago. It took me a long time since I had to separate the dress, put it through soft light then put a picture of the waterfall over it so it looked like the dress was a part of the water.

After the whole picture was finished, I changed the filter for the dress and body a couple of times but couldn't decide which one to use so I'll post both pictures on here.

Idea for my Assignment

So, Mr Powell told us that we'll be starting our assignment in about a week so we need to start gathering ideas about what we want to do.

He said we had to do something that portrays our personalities, so I was thinking to edit something on waterfalls. This is because the film of water in front of waterfalls blocks the view of the cave behind it and acts like a mask. It would probably work well with my personality because it demonstrates

the trait that I look really one way on the outside but really, it masks the feelings I experience/hold on the inside. 

I wasn't  not exactly sure how to approach this idea so I decided to try Jennifer Aniston and merge her with a waterfall to see how it looked. Unfortunately, I didn't save a copy of the incomplete file so I really don't have anything to show except for this picture of Jennifer Lawrence that I abandoned when I thought of the waterfall idea. 

Sixth Lesson

This lesson, I completed my edit on Justin Bieber but I don't think it's that well made since the head doesn't seem to fit the body of the bear well.

I wanted to try the techniques that Mr Powell showed us in class so I covered Leonardo DiCaprio with Leopard skin and put it through soft light. I made the print lighter around the eyes and mouth like Mr Powell said and I think it worked pretty well.