I haven’t posted in a while, but I have been busy.
I set up a Photo Gallery using the SmugMug.com tool. It was easy to setup, looks and works well. It includes a shopping cart. I like it – except for the cost part. My demo runs out and I have to send them money in about a week. I’m doing the whole feature set which runs around $160 a year. But I found a 20% off coupon – I did a google search for SmugMug and found coupons all over the place. It also hooks into Lightroom so I can manage the gallerys right from there. In fact you can get the 20% off if you hook up via the Lightroom interface. That’s nice. I pointed the ExquisiteLines domain at it, so it is the front end now, with a link to the blog. I guess that means I’m committed.
And I’ve been playing Photoshop. I found a fun technique on Kelby Training on Painting with Words, based on the ASICS commercial.
Here’s the commercial:
Here’s the almost final image Corey Barker built in the Kelby lesson:
It looked fun so I’ve been playing with it. I can’t say I’ve built anything amazing, but I’ve learned more about paint brushes and more blending practice.
Tonight I gave up the whole word thing and just played with a couple of textured brushes and a textured background. Here’s what I came up with.
The process is:
- Image of the actor with a plain dark background. The words/texture show on the background outside of the actor.
- Final background – in this case the asphalt texture
- Select the actor and drop in a layer mask hiding the actor’s background
- Select the portion of the actor that will be painted over with the words/texture
- Blur the edges of the selection
- Fill with black on the layer mask to add it to the blocked out portion of the actor layer
- Make a paint brush with the words/texture that you will use to paint in
- Paint on the layer mask in white along the edges of the actor to add the effect
- Add some creative blur – have fun
Brilliant, no, but kind of fun.
Keep in mind – the blog is my work book – a record of my explorations – the good stuff and the not so good stuff. What ever I learn from. The gallery is where the high end stuff will live.