Crumple the Photos?

OK, I'm playing with Flergs 'SamandDean' kit and I've gotten this far. I used MGLScraps CU 'Wrinkled Textures' and 'Playing With Paper' by Natali Design. IIRC these are all from ScrapbookGraphics.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to 'float' elements above the crumpled layer using drop shadows, or if I would crumple elements to match the background. Crumpling along with the background won't be easy, but it could be done. And I think it would look pretty darned neat.

Image Quality

I gritted my teeth and fired up the Dover Design Manager image browsing tool. It works much better when the CD ROM drive isn't on it's last legs. I copied an image that I thought would make a fun brush and started to practice. It was a scroll, slightly organic, that looked like I could repeat it and get a damask pattern. At 1075 pixels by 463 pixels and 600 pixels per inch, there was plenty of detail.

Oh, dear. Dover has done a very good job of scanning and they provided images at a high resolution. The problem is that digital graphics are much more precise than print. When I took a zoomed-in look at the image, it was grim. The very accurate scan had captured the inaccurate printing. I cleaned up a minimum of pixels and created a brush. It looked like a person with a serious hand tremor had tried to draw it and had given up part way through. It looked awful.

If I wanted to, I could use the Dover image as a starting point and spend a lot of time cleaning up the stray blobs of ink and filling in what is missing. I don't want to. Not for that practice brush. If I had an end product in mind and needed the perfect brush, I'd take the time to clean up an image.

Will I try again with other Dover images? Yes. Knowing that the image quality is good to start with means that I know I can zoom in and see details. What I can see, I can fix, if I take my time. In the future, I won't be nearly as quick to dismiss kits that have what I know are Dover images included in them as kits that were thrown together quickly and with little effort.

Short Lenses

I just looked at a profile photo taken with a cell phone. It wasn't nearly as flattering as the person taking the picture hoped it would be. Her face was distorted, due to lens length and distance from the subject. In theory, a lens' length is measured as the distance from the first piece of glass in the lens, all the way through to the piece of glass at the back of the lens. A 50mm lens is about 2" from front to back, not including all the mounting hardware. All cell phones have very short lenses. They don't have the room for anything else.

This illustration is from Ed Buziak's Photos + Artwork Blog, and you can view the original at http://blogs.salon.com/0004217/2005/07/18.html



Left image taken with a 20mm lens (super short!) at less than 12" from the subject. Center image taken with a 50mm lens (medium to short) and he didn't mention the distance from the subject. Right image taken with an 85mm (medium length) lens at about 4 feet away from the subject. I think of any lens that is 100mm or more to be long, but that's just me.

These demo photos have been shot with the camera 'nose to nose' with the subject. When shooting with short lenses, whatever is closest to the lens will appear much larger than something even 1/2" farther away. If the camera is above the subject's face, the forehead will look larger. If the camera is below, the chin will seem larger. But the feature you notice most is usually the nose. It's always bigger than it should be and that is rarely flattering.

It looks like the subject's posture has changed as well. In the left image, it looks like he is sticking his head out towards the camera. In the middle image, he looks like he is leaning forward. He isn't. That's just more of the distortion at work.

If you can, imagine what you would get if you were to use a short lens to photograph a person with poor posture, who sticks their head forward as they slouch. Then, have the camera above them and use the on-camera flash that flattens things out still more. Their oval face will become a triangle, their nose will look like it's broken and swollen and there will be almost no space between their very big nose and their small mouth. If part of their body is visible, it will look too small to support that head.

Next!

After tackling (and mastering) styles, I'm heading back to brushes. I can load them, I can use them, I can teach about them; but I don't tend to create them. And I've got many Dover books on CD that have copyright free graphics on them that I could use.

Part of the reason I haven't been using the Dover graphics is the Dover application for previewing them is clunky and slow. Then again, the last time I was trying to use my Dover stash, I was working with my old laptop, with the failing CD drive. Time to go dig into creating my own sets of brushes!

Creating Layouts

I used "Chocolate Berry Reloaded", by Flergs for all of the paper and elements. I used "Playing With Paper" by Natali Design for the paper template to create the crumpled layer.

I think I've found my mojo again. I have been creating layouts with no photos, using kits that I got recently. I've been having a lot of fun with them, starting with one kit and then looking through my collection and pulling things from different kits if I need to use more stuff.

Staying with a single designer, but using more than one of her kits works well for me. Since designers often slightly modify and re-use their elements, I get a layout that doesn't look like it was thrown together like a Frankenstein monster.

I've also discovered that I don't mind using gel, plastic and even the occasional glitter style, in moderation. There's a great tutorial on MGLScraps CT Blog that helped me discover what 'moderation' actually was.

FWIW, I still don't use the Magic Wand tool to select areas that I want to put a style on. I prefer to use the Quick Selection tool, because it is easy to add to or remove from the selection.

Prepping to Teach

I'll be attending a small 3 day crop in September. I'll be doing the digital thing, and I've been asked by at least two people to do a digital demo/lesson for beginners. I've decided that the best thing I can do for them is to teach them enough to become basic paper imitation style digital scrappers. I'll teach them how to open a new document, drag and drop, how to cut paper into rectangles and add drop shadows and a teensy bit of journaling with the text tool.

While I'm able to teach a great deal more than that, I know that nobody can learn more than that in one sitting and then, they will need time to practice it.

Fixing Designer Errors

Oh, dear. I've finally gotten to a point in my Photoshop skills that I am better at some tasks than designers. This does not surprise me. I'm a techno-geek, and I know where my talents lie.

I was working with a kit that I haven't used very much and I dropped a flower onto my layout. The flower was surrounded by a one pixel border of white. That isn't acceptable, but I understand it is a frequent result of using tools like the Magic Wand to make selections. I did a Ctrl + click on the icon in the layers palette, did a couple of selection tweaks and took that one pixel border of white away. It was seconds of work, and even less thought. I knew what to do, I knew the quick and easy way to do it and it was done.

Blink, blink, blink. Why didn't the designer fix that problem? I'm not sure the designer noticed it as a problem and she might not have known how to fix it quickly. I get the impression that a lot of designers are stumbling along with a few basic skills in Photoshop (or whatever application they are using) and they are not able to do any better than the Magic Wand can do, because that's the only tool that they have ever learned how to use.

Ugh. I'm not even sure where the Magic Wand is on the toolbar. I know that it is under another tool and not a 'default' choice. I don't use it. I'll Quick Mask, I'll use the Pen tool, I'll do all sorts of things. But the Magic Wand? I repeat, ugh.