WORLD PEACE
This project introduced me to a new, useful tool in photoshop. The gradient tool. Not only that, but it also taught me how to make unique, beautiful gradients. What I really love about this project is how you can make it specifically how you want it. For example, I chose the colors that represent peace, made it a reflective gradient, and added text with certain filters such as outer glow and drop shadow, to make it pop out more. I was able to create a new gradient preset by simply choosing my desired colors, and clicking the ‘new’ option, and renaming the preset.
LAYER MASK DERIVATIVE
This project really did a good job of opening my creative mindset. We had to pick a famous person in black and white, then use the layer mask to hide the background of the person. This process for me was really time consuming because I wanted to remove as much as the background as possible with using the black and white foreground, down to the very edge. But after is where we could choose where we wanted that person to be. Based on who you chose, it could be a very enjoyable experience. For example, I chose Thomas Edison and put him in front of Thomas Edison high school. I even went as far to create a new adjustment layer, and chose Black and White to match the picture of Thomas Edison. It was overall a simple and enjoyable project.
OMBRÈ PROJECT
For this project, we didn't use the gradient tool, but rather something more creative. In fact, it wasn't even a tool. Firstly, I had to make a selection of the girl's blonde hair. I mainly used the quick selection tool, as her hair contains a lot of solid pixels. I would then save the selection as hair, then load the selection to add the gradient. This was all known before but now we learned something new. I had to go to the application bar and select layer. I would then choose 'New fill layer', and select gradient. Then it was all up to me. I could experiment with different colors and see what looked best. After choosing my desired colors, I would save the gradient, and then I would then play around with the blending options to see what looked more natural. In the end, I went with a cotton candy blue, with the 'soft light' blending mode. It was an excellent project to do, and very fun.
