The lecture portion of Lesson 3 was a huge project in and of itself. It centered around transforming objects, combining items from different photos into one, organizing all the layers that would be needed and really pushed Photoshop's photo alteration aspects. We were given templates of an old derelict barn which a developer was planning on converting into a bar/restaurant and we needed to alter the barn to give the investors an idea as to what the barn would look like when it was finished. Our enhancements would come from other pictures which were also provided. Here is the "before" on the barn:
Several things were needing to be done to this barn. First, we needed a new sky to replace the solid, rather dull sky which required more advanced selecting than I had previously known. I selected sky from another photo, copied it into the barn picture and adjusted the position and brightness to make it look like it belonged. Next, the roof of the barn needed all the holes repaired. Using the cloning and patch tools from Lesson 2 I was able to get the roof looking good. Next required painting the barn and doing some landscaping. I selected the barn, created a new layer, compensated for the grass in front and adjusted the color to a reddish look. We then added doors and windows selected from other photos, transformed them to fit the contours of this barn, and I added neon lights to the windows. I was instructed to take a beer sign from another photo and transform it in such a way to fit it on the upper portion of the roof of the barn. I then added awning to the door, people walking into the bar, a barnyard logo and text on the front of the barn and had to alter it to look weathered. Lastly, the parking lot, motorcycles, car and other people were added, all of which were selected from other photos. With each addition, attention to detail was required to make it look like everything belonged together- that was a huge and fun challenge.
Since I wasn't being graded on the lecture portion of the lesson, I completed the barn but didn't go overboard in making everything look super good together- I got the picture of what I needed to do and was very happy with how it turned out. Here is the final rendition of the barn:
The exercise portion of the lesson required a ton of work and turned into a very painstaking project. The project was to take a photo of a cluttered looking cabin and make specific improvements to it to market as a bed and breakfast. I would be doing everything I did in the barnyard photo but this would be graded and it was at my discretion as to what changes I made. The original is shown below:
The absolute musts that had to be shown was to paint the green railing a different color, eliminate the neighbor's house, landscape the yard and add plants from other photos that were provided. We also had a photo of a sign we needed to convert into a signpost showing the name of the lodge and place somewhere on the property. Some of the parts of this came easier than others.
I started by adding a new sky which enabled me to get rid of the neighbor's houses. Next up I fixed up the roof and got rid of the antenna. The railing was next and that didn't take too long. So far so good! I started to landscape the yard by extending the stone wall and it didn't take me long there. The bear became when it was time to add plants and trees! The pictures we were given were of flowers and trees but they had different backgrounds so the plants had to be selected and extracted from each photo, pasted as a new layer into the lodge photo and adjusted to look like they belonged all along. Since no two plants were alike, I had to alter each plant enough so it didn't look repetitive. Just one plant took me two hours to select and extract as I had to make sure only the petals, leaves and stems of the plant were showing and the background wouldn't be showing. I literally spent a whole day selecting trees and flowers to add to the picture. What a job! I got things arranged in a pleasing manner and needed to add some grass to the upper tier of the yard. Then I added the sign from another photo, changed the color, transformed the perspective and added the text. I added a shadow below the sign to make it look a bit better but I honestly could made a more realistic one. After three days of intense work to get this right and with all the plant selecting, I was done and ready to get graded on it. Here is the final version:
I got a good grade on this and was happy with how things fit in. Some of my fellow students went way over the top to the point of it being absolutely unrealistic so I did pretty well. I could have tweaked some of the brightness and hue/saturation settings on the various plants to really make them look seamless but opted to move on to the next lesson.
Photoshop isn't a quick process depending on what you're trying to do- some projects can take hours, days or weeks!
My next Learning Photoshop post will focus on lessons 4 and 5 of my certification program. Lesson 3 was a big enough project that it deserved it's own post. Until next time, keep on keeping on!
