Posted by melissa on May 26, 2006 in
Photoshop Frustrated with the red-eye removal tool? I don’t like it. It never works right for me. This is the “old fashioned” way to do it.
Select a small soft brush, about the size of the red-eye you need to remove.
If you are going to work on a whole bunch at once, you can quickly change your brush size with your keyboard shortcuts, [ ]. Bigger [, smaller ]. Keyboard shortcuts are the key to working quickly. They can cut tons of time off your work. I am speedy and I know much of that comes from knowing and using my keyboard instead of my menus.
You are usually zoomed in when doing red-eye work. Use your keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out,
command space bar to zoom in for Mac
control space bar to zoom in for PC ?
option space bar to zoom out for Mac
?? for PC, help me out here,
To quickly move around you can hold down the space bar, which turns your cursor to a hand, allowing you to drag your image to the next set of eyes,
Change the brush mode to color. If you can see the color of the person’s eye, select it with the eye dropper (hold down option to bring up the eye dropper). Just tap your brush or make a small swirl to get rid of the red eye. If you do too much, use your keyboard shortcut for undo, command Z and try again.
Sometimes this won’t be enough. If the pupil is too light, use your burn tool 
set to darken shadows and darken it up a bit. If it’s a large, clear photo, adding a single highlight or enhancing the highlight in the pupil will make a huge difference.
Another must for time is using a tablet and pen. The mouse is clumsy, especially for brush work like this. A $99 wacom works great, that’s what I use. I used to have the big fancy tablets, but they aren’t any better in my opinion.
Posted by melissa on May 22, 2006 in
Photoshop Using the Dust & Scratches filter in Photoshop is a quick and easy way to eliminate dust and scratches from photos. My photo is full of nasty white spots. It’s actually a photograph of a photo. My images are very dark and I need to lighted up the shadows a bit as well as eliminate the dust and scratches.
First, I make a duplicate layer to work on. Never work on your original. I bring out the details in my shadows using levels. This makes the whole image too light. I then make a second duplicate layer to apply the Dust and Scratches filter to.
Select the new layer to make active. Go to Filter, Noise, Dust & Scratches. Use the sliders to get rid of your spots. Your image will likely become very blurry.
Click OK. Now, simply change your layer mode to darken. Adjust the oppacity of the middle layer that you lightened with levels.
Fixed Image:
I did have to use the rubber stamp tool on the blurry layer to eliminate the large white blob in the tree. I never touch my original, allowing me to easily go back and try again if I make a mistake.
Posted by melissa on May 22, 2006 in
family I’ve had many inquiries about how I managed to lose all that weight. It wasn’t from diet and exercise! I actually quit the gym when I started. I hate to exercise. I am under the care of a doctor. She has prescibed Phenteramine. It’s like legal speed. It speeds up you metabolism and makes you not hungry. And, yes, it does make you feel like you’re on speed. Sometimes I’m like the Energizer Bunny on steroids!
There are good things about this, like my house getting clean occassionally and I actually organized everything including the mounds of toys. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, I have too much to do!
If I go to bed too early (like before midnight) there is a potential that I’ll be awake for several hours during the night. This usually only happens if my 2 year old wakes up and I’m required to get out of bed and do something, like check on her, put her back to bed or pee. I couldn’t concentrate for a while. I have 2 monitors on my computer and would have about 5 projects open at once and try to actually work on them all at once accomplishing nothing. I lowered my dosage, then I switched to time-released capsules. They rock. No more crazy running around hyper. It’s an even energy that is productive and feels great.
In addition to the pills, I did a low-carb, high protein diet. I was faithful for about 3.5-4 months. I’m trying to get back into the diet part, but it’s not easy! I’m a carb addict, craving chocolate, Cold Stone Cake batter ice-cream with brownies, bread, etc. Too many carbs and I’m out of control! I want to elimnate the cravings and the only way I can do that is to get back into ketosis.
I am still on the pills. I eat less (I only have a child size ice cream now instead of a med. or large!). I’m hoping when I go off them I will continue to eat less. The carbs are a huge part of the problem.
I’m still not exercising because of some weird pain in my right side when I try and walk (for exercise, not just plain walking). I had a second CT scan today, it could be a kidney stone. I’ve turned to mush, I was in better shape when I was fat! Hopefully we’ll figure out the problem and I’ll be able to start walking soon.
I’m going to have a consult with a plastic surgeon this week. I have lots of yucky skin to get rid off. It’s like a balloon, once you blow it up, it never goes back into shape. Tummy tuck, boob lift (not bigger, just put back where they belong!) and a thigh tuck? My thighs are bad from stretch marks. I gained 87lbs. with my son. It destroyed my body. I don’t know if I want to trade it all for nasty scars. My husband was happy with me fat. He has already told me he won’t pay for it. We’ll just have to wait to see what she has to say.
Thanks for all of your comments and emails of encouragement. Losing weight is not easy. I’ve been battling it throughout my 30’s. I finally understand that I’m a carb addict after being in denial about it for years. Will power, eating less, working out more, it’s all a bunch of crap. Carb addicts are seeking a serotonin release in the brain to signal being full and or satisfied. The serotonin isn’t released like it is for normal people so we scrounge and nibble and eat even when we aren’t hungry. So, for all you carb addicts out there, there is hope!
I’m a new crusade to elimnate corn syrup from my diet. This is not an easy task, everything, including things that seem healthy, has corn syrup.
Posted by melissa on May 22, 2006 in
Photoshop Working with old photos can often lead to many variations of black and white images. Some are really black and white, some are sepia toned and others are somewhere in between. Mixing them can make for a funky looking layout. A better solution is to match them all up in regards to color. Making images pure grayscale or black and white is a simple task, so here I will show you how to match all the images to a sepia toned image.
We want to preserve the color in this image above and match a second image:
Open both images in Photoshop, the one you want to change the color on and the one you want to use as your color template. Make sure your images are RGB and not grayscale or indexed. Make the image you want to change active, in this case it’s the bw.psd. You’ll find the color match tool under Image, Adjustments, Color Match.
In the dialog box, under Image Statistics at the bottom, you choose your source for the match, in this case, sepia.psd, layer1. You can use a layer in your same file or a seperate file. Under Image Options you can control the Luminance, slide the bar until your photo looks good to you, color intensity effects the saturation, not really important in this case and Fade allows you to fade the effect.
Once the effect is finished, the photo may appear a little flat. Use levels to bring back any contrast that may have been lost. Simply slide the black triangle to where the black starts and the white triangle to where the white starts. If you click auto, your colors will change, so don’t use auto levels here.
Here is our final image, matches nicely for a more uniform layout.
Posted by melissa on May 17, 2006 in
freebies I’ve been working on some boy stuff and made some fun stickers. I will have kits and pre-made pages / albums / quick pages, whatever you want to call them, for sale one of these days. For now, enjoy the creepy crawlies and if you like them, let me know with a comment! Click on the image to download. Links to my blog are also appreciated!
Posted by melissa on May 17, 2006 in
family I started a crusade to lose weight in Sept. 2005. I am finished having babies and I was tired of being fat. Here are some before and after photos. I have 20lbs more to lose, but I’m not working very hard to get rid of it. I have a closet full of new clothes that I really like!
April 2006 - Easter Sunday
July 2005
May 2006
May 2005
