How to Create a Red Planet

This is what I created with Photoshop:


The tutorial can be found here: Photoshop Tutorial: Red Planet

Very simple and easy to follow. Hope my coursemates find this helpful. :)

Music for my wallpaper =.='

Sorry for the very late entry. This is the music for my wallpaper. Hope it fits the mood! :D

Photo Retouching

Okay, so we've learned in class about photo retouching. Here's some ways to modify and change you photo.


Okay, so here's a photo obviously a bit lopsided.


I used the crop tool as circled to crop the picture and make it upright by dragging the mouse around the area and rotating it.


And now the picture is like this:


To adjust the color of the photo, I went to Image>Adjustments>Auto Color


So now the photo looks much brighter.


I want to replace the color of the girl's cap so I picked the rectangular marquee tool and highlighted the girl's cap.


After that, I selected Image>Adjustments>Replace Color


The I adjusted the hue, saturation and lightness.


After that, I want to sharpen the image a bit so I select Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen


After that, I selected Shadows/Highlights to add a bit of depth to the picture.


Now here's the fun part. I selected the Healing Brush tool to get rid of the defects on the brick wall. I sampled a good part of the wall by pressing alt and then clicking on the part and then dragged it over the defected part.


Finally, I used the burn tool to darken the border of the image, making the girl on the wheel the main focus.


And that's it. :)

Last minute changes. :3

I've made some last minute changes to my e-wallpaper by resizing the font and making it bigger plus picking a lighter shade of yellow.

Here's the final product:

Starting on Wallpaper

Okay, this is my process on working on my e-wallpaper.

First, I create a new file. The size is International Paper A4. Then, I rotate the canvas to be landscape. After that, I placed a picture of kampong on the workspace.

It's good to rename the layer that the picture was on. I didn't rename until the end, because I kind of forgot. However, it didn't affect much with my managing the layers.

Then I selected the Quick Selection Tool because the contrast between the kampong house and the white sky allows me to use it easier.

Circled in red. :)

I drag the cursor around the object that I want to select which is the kampong house.


Then I right-clicked on the selected object and chose Layer Via Copy to transfer the selected object to another layer.


I deleted the layer of the original picture of the object so that all that is left is just the kampong house.


Then, I placed a picture of a mosque. I adjusted the size to the one that I want and right-clicked and then chose Place.

I used the same selection tool to select the mosque from the picture. After that, this is what I got:


As usual, it doesn't look too smooth.


To make the outlines of the kampong house and mosque smoother, I used the eraser tool and adjusted the diameter and hardness. I used a variety of sizes but kept the hardness at
about 60%.


I drag the cursor around the outline making sure it is smooth without any jagged ends.




I did the same thing with the mosque's layer and erased the unnecessary details around the outlines.


I used the Quick Selection tool on the kampong house and selected Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen to make the image of the kampong house sharper and less blurry.


So now, they both look much smoother without any jagged details.


After that, I placed the picture of the father and daughter holding hands signifying forgiveness on Hari Raya. I used the quick selection tool (my favourite tool) to select the two figures and do the same as I did with the other images.



Then I used the eraser tool to get rid of the green BG (background) of the figures' image.


I used the paintbrush tool and selected green colour which is commonly associated with Aidilfitri festival and colored the BG layer full.
Then, I placed a picture of crescent moon on the BG and resized it.


I copied the crescent moon image so there will be two. One image I selected only the crescent moon and the other the star.


I selected the clone stamp tool as shown.


I sampled the star by clicking on it and pressing Alt at the same time. After that, I went to another area on the BG and click and drag the mouse. Another star appears. I did this several times to get more stars.


I selected the layer of the BG, the crescent moon and the star and merged them all together.








I opened the filter gallery and chose which effect I wanted for the each of the layer.

Kampong House = Pallete Knife
Mosque = Fresco
BG = Mosaic Tiles


Then, I selected the layer of the figures and the kampong to adjust their brightness and contrast.


I added text to the wallpaper that's suitable to the festival and chose yellow as the colour of the font.


I chose the Layer Style and added a drop shadow and outer glow to the text.

This is the final product. :)

Test...

Here's a picture I've worked on just to find out how to arrange my wallpaper:


I know the size isn't right and so is the resolution. This is just to get the idea on how to arrange and compose my wallpaper.

Pictures to be used?

Well, I have found some pictures that I want to use for my e-wallpaper. Here they are:


I will use the two figures: the father and the daughter only.


The kampong house will be the main part of the background. (minus the slightly visible KL tower there -_-'')


Maybe I will add the crescent moon as it is the sign of Aidilfitri.

Maybe some lanterns as decoration. :)

I also want to add a small mosque at the background because Muslims go for their Aidilfitri prayers on Aidilfitri morning and I want to somehow incorporate that into the wallpaper without taking away the main message which is forgiveness.

Working with layers, selections, fonts and effects

Okay, so today, I'm going to show how I work with layers, selection, editing, fonts, and effects.
I'm going to take a picture of my cat and put him in a sunset background and adding a bit of text.




First, I create a new file and resize it to international paper, A4 size. Please ignore the McAfee alert there. -_-'




At the layers pallete, you can create a new layer by clicking the icon shown above.



You can rename your layer by double clicking at the layer. In this case, I will rename my layer as 'Cat'.


Go to File and select Place to place an image on the artboard.


Resize the image so that it will fit according to your satisfaction. After that, right-click and select place to place it permanently in the artboard.

There are a few selection tools to choose from.


First, there's the marquee tool, which has four types of selection tool: rectangular, elliptical, single row and single column.

Second, there's the selection tool which consists of quick selection tool and magic wand tool.

But for now, I will use the lasso tool, specifically the magnetic lasso tool to take out only my subject (my cat) from the whole picture.

Move the mouse and drag it along the outline of the subject that you want until it is closed (you will know this when a small circle appears at the cursor)
Right-click on the selected object and choose Layer via Copy to separate it from the picture. You can also choose Layer via Cut.


The new selected object will be placed in another layer. It is not separated yet from the background. If you still want to keep the background but would like to see the selected object only, you can click on the eye at the selected object's layer, like so:

If you don't want to keep the rest of the unselected picture, you can just delete the original layer it was on by clicking the trash can icon or dragging the layer to the icon.



Okay, so here's the selected object. It doesn't look too good with the jagged edges, right?


You can select the eraser tool to erase the jagged edges and make it look smoother and better. There are three different modes of eraser at the option bar above:


As for me, I like to use the brush mode as it gives a soft edge to the outline of the object. But it's your choice, you can choose either pencil, brush or block. :)

Erase the jagged edges by dragging the mouse along the edges. Zoom in for a better precision and better view.

So the finish product will look like this:


To put in a background, I placed another picture on the artboard, like so:

Since the layer where the BG (background) is is above the layer of the object, it is considered placed on top of the the cat. You can drag the layer of the background to be below the cat's layer:

Now, the cat is on top of the BG, so there should be no problem.


You can select the Move tool to adjust the position of the object in the picture. Select the layer of the object and move it by dragging with the mouse to the position that you want.


I wanted to put more light in the background to highlight the sunset even more. Go to Filter and select Render > Lighting Effects.

You can change the lighting effects any way you want by playing with the options in the Lighting Effects window.

After that, I wanted to darken the cat a bit so it will look like it's shadowed by the light of the sunset. Go to Image and select Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast.


You can adjust the brightness and darken the object with Contrast.

The picture will now look like this:


I now want to add text to the picture. Click on the new layer button and rename the new layer as Text.


Go to the Type Tool icon and you can select the type of typography that you want: Horizontal, Vertical, Horizontal Type Mask and Vertical Type Mask.


I choose the Horizontal Type tool for my Picture. To create new type, drag the mouse on the picture and release it. You can adjust the size and the type of font at the option bar above.


You can change the font colour from basic black to any colour you want:

That's my cat's name: Willie. :D

When the text colour window pops up, you can click on the Color Libraries and pick from a selection of colours and choose from any colour books. In this case, I pick Pantone Solid Coated.

After editing your text, here's what it will look like:


The text doesn't look good being in front of the object. So I did the same thing with the cat and the BG by dragging the layer of the text below the cat's layer.


So now, it will be like this:


I move the object and the text to a better position using the Move tool.

You can change the look of the text by clicking on the Layer Style icon at the Layer palette.


Here, you can play with the styles like shadows, gradients, glows and strokes.


I added a bit more lighting on the cat to increase the visibility so you can see the cat's features a bit more. I selected the cat's layer and used the Lighting Effect that I did before.


After finishing it, I saved the file as JPEG, a picture file.


I set the quality to a 10, the maximum level.



Here's the finished product:

I hope my peers can understand or even learn a little bit of something from my post here. I will try to help my fellow classmates if I can.