Tag Archives: photoshop elements killer tips

Photo-A-Day

And yet, not a Graphic Designer

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And yet, not a graphic designer
Photo-A-Day #1386

That title is kind of a personal running joke of mine. When I started at my present job I applied to be a graphic designer. I ended up in the implementation division traveling the country and teaching people how to use our software. I started this blog so that I could have a creative outlet and also to track the places I’ve been and the experiences I’ve had. I am completely happy that I wasn’t hired to be a graphic designer. What I take away from that is be open to new experiences and opportunities because you don’t know where they will take you.

Even though I am not a graphic designer I did get to use my photoshop skills the past few weeks. You see, I’m that guy that gets the 11th hour call when something visual is needed. This time I was called upon to hand create 321 yearbookyourself type images. The reason we didn’t use yearbookyourself to do this was that the site closed down on the exact day that the project was approved. So then plan B was invoked.

“Hi, I am Plan B.”

I was asked to take 321 photos from employee badges and then make those photos into yearbook ones. I started with a couple ones and I made a pretty crude attempt at the blending but they were good enough to keep so I got the job. First things first if I am making 321 of these images and making them look good I’d better learn a better way to edit these images. I turned to a very cool podcast called Photoshop Elements Killer Tips and I watched the episode called Clipping mask. I’d explain the process but Corey Barker does a much better job. So watch the podcast to learn how I took the image, changed the background layer to a regular layer, pulled over the other image, added a clipping mask and then blended the two images to make the old yearbook style images.

I wanted to make sure that everyone enjoyed and got a good laugh from their images so I worked really hard on them. I even gave myself the goofiest looking photo just in case someone didn’t like theirs they could look at mine and feel better.

So here is mine, for your viewing pleasure.

My base photo

andrew_bennett_bw

My base yearbook photo

hs_men_004

The finished product.

andrew_bennett_1969

Photo-A-Day, Transformers

Acid Tweets

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Acid Tweets
Photo-A-Day #1379

I’ve been doing some interesting things with Photoshop lately. One great resource is Photoshop Elements Killer Tips. This is a very cool video podcast that helps users master great tricks with Photoshop Elements. I’ll tell you more about it once the event happens next Friday.

But one thing I’ve done with PhotoShop is finally update my Twitter background with a custom one. I detailed info about that on The Wired Kayaker blog. I had a lot of fun working on this and I hope that you get a kick out of it too.

If you look deeper at my Twitter background you’ll see an Easter Egg. That is what prompted photographing some of my Transformers today. They Transformers pictured are Acid Storm and Prowl.

My friend Mo of We’re In A Fight was at SeaWorld today and she saw some folks from IZEA. She even caught a glimpse of Ted Murphy but she was unable to catch him. I tweeted the whole thing but was unable to connect them. It could be that Ted had to go and dry off after being swamped by Shamu.