Learning Photoshop: Part One

For years I have had a strong desire to be able to edit photos, create "art" and feed my creative juices using powerful programs like Photoshop. When I had opportunities to use it I found myself overwhelmed with the tools available and I honestly didn't know where to begin. I had tried tutorial books I checked out from the library but had to return them before I was finished so mine was a fragmented knowledge to say the least. As time went by, no matter what I was doing, the nagging desire was always there to become a Photoshop master.

Fortunately a change in my employment situation finally gave me the motivation to pursue a more complete knowledge. I enrolled in a digital arts certification program at an online design college and my first class was "Photoshop Basics." Each lesson was packed with information and was very much a crash course in Photoshop.

The Original Taxi Picture

My first assignment was to select a taxi cab from a photo, remove it from the background and put it into a new image then duplicate the taxi cab with each new taxi being a different color. It took me hours to accurately select the original taxi and get everything arranged in a manner I was happy with. It wasn't perfect work, but for a guy who didn't have the foggiest idea how to extract an object from a photo, I was pretty happy with the outcome.

The Original Had Very Colorful Children

I got a good grade on the first assignment so I eagerly got into lesson number two. After spending a few days on the second lecture, I was assigned to use some of Photoshop's editing tools to edit a little girl's dirty face and make it worthy of going in a travel brochure. The original is pictured below:

As you can see, the little girl's face is very dirty and it looks like she has been rolling in the dirt. Our assignment was to correct the exposure of the photo, clean up her hand a bit, and completely clean up her face so her mother would be proud to show the photo off.
I first improved the lighting levels of the picture as the original was very underexposed. I then went about using Photoshop's various tools like the Spot  Healing Brush, Healing Brush and Patch Tools as well as the Clone Stamp Tool to take care of the dirt specks, mud globs and red scrapes on her face. The only way to fix the photo was to use a combination of the tools so it was an excellent learning experience. I worked on it for a few hours each day over the course of a few days as I was somewhat clumsy using the program. The piece I submitted is as follows:

It is noticeably brighter than the original and she does look lots better than before. I also had to sharpen the original photo so it is a bit crisper. I got a good grade on the assignment but got some feedback indicating that  it was a bit obvious where I had removed smudges or scrapes and that it wasn't quite professional quality editing. I was still really happy with what I had done. It took a long time and was a noticeable improvement from before.
Tonight, before typing this post, I gave it another whirl. I have since finished the Photoshop class and am about to take Advanced Photoshop and I've edited at least 100 photos since then so my proficiency is much improved. I decided to see if I could give her face a much smoother, cleaner look. Below is the finished version which took me about 20 minutes to do (compared to several hours worth of work on the one above):

If I wanted to take more time to really fine tune the thing, the little girl wouldn't look quite so porcelain as she does now :) Still, I have to marvel at how practice, sound instruction and feedback really helped me be able to do things like this in a very quick period of time. It reminds me of something President Heber J. Grant of the LDS Church was quoted as saying: "That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased." How true President Grant, how true!

I learned much, much more during the other four lessons of my Photoshop basics class. Stay tuned for part two coming soon!