A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

First I picked a picture of myself and made a new window ( file- new- 4 by 4). Used my text tool to make three different fonts ( each a different layer) & used my marquee tool around the text ( M). The I went to edit and define brush preset, then went back to my picture. Then i went to select - color range & midtones, I made a duplicate layer on the original photo ( Ctrl J). Then I named the layer midtones and I did the same for the shadows. Then went to edit, fill, and filled midtones with 50 % gray and shadows to black ( kept the perserve transparency checked). Then I right clicked on the shadows and clicked merge visible after I clicked the eyes off from my original photo layers. The I made a new layer, filled the background with white ( Ctrl Backspace).  I went to my brush tool (B), then I went to window - brushes (F5) and brush tip shape. Spacing moves letters away from each other, Space Dynamics: angle jitter flips the letter around & size jitter makes words bigger. ( I used this for each brush). I made a layer mask on my text layer, selected all ( Ctrl A) on shadows layer and copied it ( Ctrl C). The I inverted my picture to a mask ( Ctrl I), Then I pressed fx and went to gradient overlay. I changed the color and changed the blend mode to screen. I had a problem understanding how to do it at first, so Ms. Minkle sat down with me and helped me with the first half of it. Once I was done I really didnt like the black and white version of it so that why I changed it to rainbow it looks better.

=)

.:: Creation Of Choice ::.

First of all I started off by editing all of the pictures individually before putting them together. I started off with the background, I used brightness and contrast; brightness -2 & contrast 73. Then for Alex (top left corner), I used curves; input 166 & output 179. Then using vibrance, I set it to 26 and saturation 5.And for color balance; Cyan/Red: 22, Magenta/Green: 10 Yellow/Blue: -10.  Kenny (bottom left corner) I started off by using the burn tool ( O) because his skin was too bright. Then used vibrance; vibrance set to – 3 and saturation 3. Also used brightness and contrast; brightness -5 , contrast 17. Raymond (bottom right corner) didn’t need much editing so I used curves; input 153 & output 150. Then I used brightness & contrast; brightness -20, contrast 13. Marcus ( the baby), I used curves; input 184 & output 209. Vibrance 23, saturation 7, brightness -5 contrast 7. April (to the right of Marcus), I used curves; output 190 & input 174. And I used brightness and contrast; brightness 6 & contrast 27. David ( next to Raymond)  I used curves; output 190 & input183. Brightness and contrast; contrast -1, contrast 27. For Myle & Shawna (In between Kenny & David) I didn’t really need to do a lot of editing because it was already pretty vibrant but it was dark. So I used cuves; output 183 & input 138.

Now that all the editing is done, I started off by making a blank background. I went to file, new ( height 4 & width 6). Then for the background I selected it using marquee ( M) and moved it to the blank background using the move tool. And I shrunk it using free transform ( Ctrl T).  I used the marquee tool for all of the people on it & copy and pasted too ( Ctrl C & Ctrl V). I tried refining the edge for everyone but it wasn’t working so I used the blur tool around them. For the text, I made a new layer and used the text tool

( T). Then I right clicked on the text box and went to blending options. Drop Shadow: Blending mode at normal/ Opacity 67/ Distance 6/ Spread 8/ Size 3/ Noise 0. Outer Glow: Blending Mode- Screen/ Opacity 75/ Noise 0/ changed the color to purple. Elements: Technique- softer/ Spread 13/ Size 9. Quality: Range 37 & jitter 8. I changed the color of Raymond’s shirt to red by selecting his shirt, went to image – adjustment- and replace color. Then I set the hue to (- 27), saturation ( -7) & lightness ( -4).  For the brush or stamp whatever tickles your fancy. I made a new layer and used a image from the internet and copy and pasted it to my project, then I used free transform to shrink it.

Then I went to edit & define brush preset, then created a clipping mask ( Alt – Ctrl G). For the boarder, I went to edit and stroke; width 10px and set the color to pink. Location – center & Blending mode normal opacity 100. Then I went to filter and ripple; amount 25.

            I like it because it makes me think about what amazing people God has given me and how they have made such an impact on my life. Since they have done so much for me I decided to make something dedicated to them, they are everything I need and more and I don’t know what I would do without them.