Technical Tips and a Photoshop tutorial - Week 11

The following bullet points are tips and information shared during this weeks lessons which I have noted down:

• Change the spot meter setting (shown below on the D7000 top screen) to one with a small dot for portraiture photography to focus on a mid-grey surface and to get the best exposure.

• 5 is Mid grey on "The Zone System" exposure scale. To get a white/whited-out background for portraits use zone 8 or 9. 
• Green Grass is a mid grey - remember if shooting outside so that the sky isn't too over exposed and bleached out, causing a lack of detail. 
• Work out how far away your skin is from mid grey or carry a mid-grey card with you also to that you have the right exposure value. 
• Camera raw edits raw files non destructively. Always set your camera to shoot in RAW to get the highest quality photo's which aren't compressed.
• If you edit on Jpegs in PhotoShop, get used to using layers to edit non destructively. 
• You can straighten lines in buildings to make it look more realistic as the D7000 tends to curve lines, or alter perspective to make photographs appear less realistic. You can use rulers on the screen to adhere to the blue guidelines. 
• Command 'T' for free transform. 
• Can put different effects such as brightness/contrast/saturation etc. into new layers to be non destructive using the adjustment pallette.
• To duplicate layer drag layer to blank page symbol at bottom of layer section.

• You can take parts of the photo to cover up other sections that you wish to eliminate.
• Magnetic collection picks up on contrast and similar tones. 
• Select something go to layer and press copy to layer - it copies what you selected to a new layer. 
• Control Z = undo. 
• Using the clone stamp tool: Choose size of brush, alter the opacity and flow. Hold down alt and click an area to paint from. (make sure you're on the correct layer) 
• Save as tiff for final photo to print from as it is highest quality (jpeg compresses quality)
• Check out patch content aware tool. Is quickest form of removing parts of the image/photograph, if you know how to use it well enough. 

I have watched this tutorial and experimented with the patch content aware tool in CS6:

I have previously used content aware before when aiming to create an idea of a faceless photograph of myself and my boyfriend. I also used it to eliminate the glare on the photograph that my mum holds up to the camera:

As you can see the left photo has a slight glare on the right which I have selected using the selection tool which gave me a rough content aware replacement. I then used my patch tool to make it fit better and look more realistic. The results can be seen in the photo on the right. There looks like there is a slight smudge from the photo onto my mums neck but that is a strand of hair.

Using the following tutorial, I created a blended image. I have used gradient masks and blends before when attempting tilt shift photography...

This is the image I created when following this tutorial:

I blended rich golden corn with dry/dying pond plants to symbolise life and death simultaneously.