Week 7: Edge Effects

1. Flexible Vignette

1. Swing; 10; 15; 2010; 4:30 p.m.; Rexburg, ID; f/3.2; 1/640;

Sony DSC-H7; Edited in Camera Raw and Photoshop

For this photo, I first increased the contrast, vibrance, brightness, clarity, and sharpness in Camera Raw. Then, I opened the image in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I copied the layer, and then cropped the photo. Next, I hit shift-command-N to add a new blank layer. Then, I set the foreground and background colors to default and inserted the foreground color into the new layer. I used the rectangular marquee tool to draw a box, about an inch from the edge, inside the image. I then hit the delete tool to create an opaque border. Finally, I reduced the opacity on this layer to about 70 percent and increased the feathering to about 50 percent.

2. Double Fade Border

2. Barber Chair; 9.29.2010; 1:33 p.m.; Bannack, MT; f/3.2; 1/200;
Sony DSC-H7; Edited in Camera Raw and Photoshop

I first increased the contrast, fill lights, recovery, clarity, and vibrance of this photo in Camera Raw. I then opened the image in Photoshop and added the edge effect. For the edge effect, I copied the layer and cropped the picture to 9 by 7 inches. Then, I went to image-canvas size to add on an inch to the height and width and to select the extension color. The extension color was taken from the chair. Next, I used the rectangle tool, on shape layer, to draw a black, not white, rectangle about .25 inches in from the edge of the image. Then, I added a mask to the shape layer. In the mask, I drew another rectangle .25 inches in from the first rectangle. For this rectangle, however, I selected fill pixels. Next, I reduced the opacity of this layer to 60 percent. Finally, I used the motion blur filter on the shape layer twice. The first time, I added 45px to the distance, but didn't change the angle. The second time, I changed the angle to 90 and left the distance at 45px.

3. Flexible Brushed-on Effect

1. Horses; 9.29.2010; 9:55 a.m.; Dubois, ID; f/5.0; 1/640;
Sony DSC-H7; Edited in Camera Raw and Photoshop

I used Camera Raw to increase the vibrance, clarity, sharpness, and contrast of this photo. Then, I opened the image in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I copied the layer and hit shift-cmd-N to add a new layer. I hit D to set the colors at default. Then, I hit cmd-delete to fill the new layer with white. Next, I dragged the image layer above the white layer. On this layer, I hit the alt key to add a black layer mask. Finally, I loaded the think heavy brushes and used the brush tool to paint back the image. I rotated between brushes 3, 2, and 5 and played with the opacity to get this effect.