In Honor of Soccer

Well, first the layout (I used the clone brush to clone out DH in the middle photo -- sorry honey! and again in the first photo to clone out the woman in grey sweats):



By the way, notice how the title type is all jammed up against itself (I used Dream Orphans as the font for this, btw)? While in Type Tool mode, place your cursor in front of the letter you want to modify, then press alt+right/left arrow key to make that particular letter shift forward or backward a couple of scooches. You can also highlight a group of letters and do that, or a whole word, or even modify the spacing between words--this is really useful when you don't want a word to break/hyphenate at the end of a paragraph or something (you should never have just one word dangling onto the next line, either--so sayeth the typography ghods!).

I also applied the "reticulation" filter to the rasterized type, which I'd never played with before. I think it's under the Sketch filter group, and it gave the title a nice texture. Stroked it, gave it an inside red shadow (base font color was cone orange), and set it to color dodge, which allowed the middle picture to not be so obscured. I'm still not entirely pleased about the arrangement of the journaling, but I have corrected the typo. =)

And then Allen and I were goofing around today, and here's our second installment of Crocodile the Worm (wherein our hero learns that using your head is not always all it's cracked up to be):

Recoloring With the Clone Tool

Is this too simple a tip? Please forgive me if this is really obvious...

Don't forget that items can be recolored in non-uniform colors, too! You can clip them to a patterned paper, of course, by placing the paper in a layer above your item, then pressing ctrl+alt+g (in PS CS2). But you can also use some unusual functions of the clone tool (the one that looks like a little old-fashioned rubber stamp) to add texture and color to otherwise "flat" items, and tie them in with your layout as well.

The unusual functions are 1) the non-aligned function (unclick the little check mark next to "aligned" in the tool options bar at the top), and 2) Sample all layers (click the check mark on that one).

1) The non-aligned function will allow you to pick up the photo in such a fashion that you'll clone just as usual starting where you alt-clicked on your source, BUT, when you lift your pen/mouse and put it down again, you'll return to that same first source instead of staying a measured distance from it. This allows you to introduce some randomness into the cloning.

2) If you're trying to recolor an item using this method, you're in a bit of a quandary if your source is on one layer, and your item to be recolored is on another. That's where the "sample all layers" comes into play very nicely, allowing you to alt-click to set the source on any layer you please, then clone into the layer of your choice. This is helpful if you're not quite sure of the placement of your recolored item yet--having it on a separate layer allows you much more freedom than if you had already merged it with the source layer!

Oh, and I almost forgot: remember to restrict the painting of the cloned image to just your item by cntrl-clicking the thumbnail of the layer you want to be working on. This will select just the colored elements of that layer, allowing you to work without fear of messing up the edges or something!

The next two layouts show how I used this. In the first one, I used the sunset picture to recolor the frame. It's kind of interesting how the frame seemed to take on a metallic sheen! I also used both these methods to recolor the squares and word "Forever" in the second layer. It really looks much better than just a "flat" color, and repeating the bit of ocean in the upper right hand photo kind of ties the layout together in terms of "water".

Please click on the thumbnails for larger versions and credits:

The Clone Tool

Probably one of the most useful Photoshop tools ever, the clone tool enables you to perform all kinds of magic on photographs. You can enhance skin tone, clone out that freak in the background of all your picnic pictures, or get rid of a color that clashes or a distracting element.

In the following layout, I used the clone tool (as well as some recoloring of the photo, and some different blending modes) to even out my nephew's skin around the eyes and the bridge of the nose, as well as get rid of all that teething drool. =) I find that the easiest way to work with the cloning tool for textured surfaces or non-detail work is to use the clone tool set to NON-aligned. Then, each time you pick up your pen, you go back to the same source point instead of picking up continuous pixels. This adds more randomness and avoids having the texture look fake. In addition, try reducing opacity and using soft, grungy brushes that will also introduce a non-repetitive factor, which is pretty easy for the eye to pick up on. Here's the layout, followed by the pic (please click on layout for materials source (all Designer Digitals):



Original photo:



And here, just for fun, is a quick layout for a great picture of Candice (owner of Art Neko and Kathy (owner of Rubber Stamp Ave.) goofing around before dinner (the best crispy eggplant EVER at Fujin's, in Portland OR). Click on photo for details: