First Finished Product

I have successfully finished editing my first picture in photoshop! I took the picture I talked about in my last blog post and I figured out how to make black and white images. There are a couple of ways to change a picture into a black and white image, but I liked this one way the best, and I will tell you what it is!

Here are the steps I used to change my picture, with picture examples so that you can get a better idea of what tools/settings that I used to make my picture black and white and what tools I used to enhance the picture. The picture examples with the description will give you a clearer demonstration on what I all used to change my picture and how to access them in case you are wondering how to do it yourself in photoshop. 

Changing your photo into a black and white image: 

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images

Step 2: Select the adjustments option
Step 3: Then click gradient map
Step 4: A bar will pop up, hit the okay option and then viola! Your picture is in black and white.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing your exposure: 

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3:  Pick the exposure setting.

Step 4: Play around with the exposure, offset and gamma correction bar by moving the scale up or down until you feel that your picture is properly exposed.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing brightness and contrast:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3: Pick the Brightness/Contrast option

Step 4:  Play with the contrast and the brightness bar until you feel like you found the right option for your picture.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing colour balance:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3: Pick the Colour Balance option

Step 4: Move the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow scales up and down, until you find the right settings for you picture. 

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

After I used all these tools on photoshop I was pretty satisfied with my picture. But I thought I'd ask someone else for suggestions on what else I could do to my picture, because Im always wanting to find new ways to improve my pictures. I talked to my friend Felicity, who is also doing photography for her passion project. Felicity is amazing photographer who has a lot of experience with photoshop. I sent my picture to her, asking for some advice on what else I could change to my picture to improve it. She suggested to add a little vignette to the sides of the picture and to add midpoint. She said these features would make the picture pop more. I googled it, and figured out how to use these tools. Here is what I did:  

Adding vignette and midpoint:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select Filter.
Step 2: Select the Distort option.
Step 3: Pick the Lens correction option.

Step 4: A large screen will pop up showing a big version of your picture. To add vignette and midpoint to your picture, move the vignette and mid point bars up or down, until you are satisfied with how it looks. *Note: when the screen pops up with your picture a grid will be over it. If you want to move the grid because it is a little distracting, click the check mark box by the Show Grid option on the bottom right hand side of the screen*
Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button.

Here is my first finished photoshop edit. I am very happy with how it turned out, and am already feeling more comfortable with using photoshop:

The before

and after picture!

Thanks again to my friend Felicity Pollard for the help with editing my picture! Check out Felicitys blog:http://devolpingnegatives.wordpress.com. She has some really beautiful pictures :) 

If you want to see more of my pictures check out my filckr account: My flickr account

Here are the youtube tutorials that helped me learn all the things I talked about:

Changing black and white pictures, contrast, brightness and exposure  

Adding vignette and midpoint

Video on adding vignette and midpoint

Complications and Successes

The beginning of the photo shoot, Miranda and
Taylor carrying their bags of clothing. 

I went on a photoshoot with my friends Taylor Vaags and Miranda Vlaming. Taylor and I will be working on this project together a lot so we decided that doing a photoshoot together would be fun and also helpful. Miranda came as a extra model. All three of us brought bags of clothing for costume changes and everything, which provided entertainment throughout the shoot! It was nice having Taylor there so that her and I could talk about what modes we were using to take different pictures and it was nice to be able to collaberate with someone during the shoot. We went to Kildonana Park around 3:30pm and didnt end up leaving until 5:30pm. Because of daylight savings, it was getting dark pretty fast so we also needed to move very fast, which we thought might be a bit stressful, but the pictures turned out nicely and we all had a lot of fun.

For using photoshop I am having a bit of troubles. The program I am using is a older version of photoshp (Photoshop CS3) and all the tuturiols I am looking at requires the newer version. Also, Ive heard from some friends of mine that using the newer version of photoshop is also quite a lot easier to use, then the old version that I am using... which is a bit frustrating. At first, Taylor and I talked about splitting the cost and purchasing photoshop together, but it turns out that this program can cost around $600! Which is not what we expected at all. I have an interest in getting the newer photoshop program, but am unsure of how to I will be doing this. I guess for now, I will just have to look at tutorials with the photoshop that I have. 

I  am currently working on one picture from the photoshoot. It is a picture of taylor and miranda together. I love this picture because you can see how happy the two of them are together, and that they love being together which I like to focus on.  The problem with the picture is that our bags of clothing are in the background and it is VERY distracting. It probably doesnt help that the bag is hot pink either...haha. So I figred out how to take the bag out which is something I was very happy about! Here is the before and after shots of the pictures: 

Before, with a very distracting bag in the background 

After, a hot pink bag free picture!

How I did it: 
On the left side of the computer screen there is a bar that is called the toolbox. To remove an object from a picture you go to your tool box and select the stamp tool. Then you hit the alt key on your keyboard and you drag over a part of the picture that you can replace your unwanted object with. For example, I replaced the bag with the path that would have been shown in the picture if the bag was not there. So I dragged my stamp tool over another part of the path in the picture that is shown. Ater you do that you let go of the alt key and click your mouse and drag the stamp over the object you don't want. It looks like you are coloring a picture when you do this step! One problem I had with this is that when I was "colouring" over the object I wanted to remove, was that other part of the picture would start showing up, instead of the path that I had been copying! I found out that you just need to keep repeating the first steps because the stamp tool starts copying other objects in the picture as you move away from the original object that you are copying. Then after your object is removed from the picture, you go to the tool bar and select the healing brush tool and click and hold down the curser over the area that you copied. This tool allows things to blend into their surroundings, looking more natural.

Instagram post 

Being the typical girl teenager, I posted my pictures on instagram. I took two other pictures of Miranda and Taylor that didn't have the bag in the background I edited the pictures in VSCOcam and made the pictures black and white. I loved the way these pictures looked in black and white! So my new goal is to learn how to make black and white pictures on photoshop, so that i can make the picture that i took the bag out of even nicer :) So this picture is not a finished product...yet!

If you want to look at more pictures I took with miranda and taylor, check out my flicker account!
My flickr account

Here is a youtube tutor that helped me out a lot:
Removing unwanted objects