I mentioned briefly in my previous post that I had finally broken down and invested in Adobe Photoshop. The purchase was a combination of both personal and professional interests – in my field of communications it’s definitely beneficial to broaden your software experience.
While I could have chosen any number of programs, I picked Photoshop because it’s more useful than many programs and, frankly, I was getting tired of not having a lot of the functionality I wanted for my photo processing.
Photoshop is not cheap – and I can see why. The complexity and depth of the program is hard to wrap your mind around. One professor I spoke to described it as a black hole – you can just keep going and going without end. That seems pretty accurate.
Since I didn’t really know where to begin, I decided to take a course to show me the ropes. It’s been pretty awesome so far – I’ve discovered brushes, gradients, layers (sort of), and of course dodging and burning.
I’m just past the halfway point and I thought I’d post a couple of my assignments for kicks.
First up is a shot from the fall fair. I converted to a sepia shot and then selectively coloured parts of the image:

- Michael D. Pereira
You can see the original here.
I also learned how to create a brush from an existing image and turn it into a stamp. Using that tool, I created this fun Warhol-esque image of Malcolm: