Photo Slideshow

Here is the slideshow I created using Windows Movie Maker. All the photo were taken with my camera. Using Windows Movie Maker was pretty easy to use. All you really need to do to make a slideshow is drag the photos that you want to use into the interface, add transitions and music and your good to go. The longest part of making the slideshow is adding transitions. The song i used for the slideshow came from Royal Bass Records who I follow on Soundcloud.

Sound...

I didn't end up doing anything with sound as of yet but I may mess around with some stuff for my next project. instead of doing sound for the last project I decided to make a photo slide show with window movie maker. I took a bunch of photos that I have taken, put them into windows movie maker, added transitions and music, poof, slideshow. I wanted to use flash to create the slideshow but trying to find pirated software that is virus free is pretty hard to come by these days. Anyways, I'll be posting the slideshow in my next post and hopefully i get to mess with some sound in the near future.

Sound

This week in my multimedia course at school I am going to explore sound a little bit maybe mess around with some different software. Over the weekend when I had the iPad I tried out garage band which i though was pretty cool and pretty user friendly. I also tried out the app for the Korg iMS-20. This app is pretty advanced but I did manage to get some sounds going. There is a lot involved with that app, this might be something I may explore a bit more in the near future.

iPad Apps

Today at school I started messing around with an iPad. I tried out the Google Earth app and was surprised at how well it was configured for the iPad, using 2 fingers to zoom in/out and rotate the map was pretty awesome. the only thing I did find the Google Earth app was that it was a little bit choppy and it takes a little bit more effort to render the image, but we are talking about a tablet that doesn't have near as much computing power as your standard computer. I would imagine that the app will run a lot better on "The New iPad" as well due to the updated processor and graphics.

I also tried out SketchBook Pro which is an app that allows you to draw stuff using various types of brushes. I didn't really go too crazy with it, I just simply drew, as Ian said "The Classic Field, Tree, Blue sky, Sunny day Painting". I am going to experiment with this app a little bit more, it seems like there's a lot of options to explore.

Besides a few classic games like Monopoly and The Game of Life, which were pretty awesome but at the same time pretty standard to other versions I have used in the past, I messed around with garage band and created a short little loop consisting of 4 layers, acoustic guitar, piano, strings and some simple drums.  Garage Band allows you to take a wide selection of instruments create a riff and then layer other parts on top of it. A monkey could use it, its that easy. you can chose from individual notes or chords. if you chose chords garage band will give you a choice of 4 variations of how those chords are played. This is another app I am going to explore a bit.

The Next Project

Over the next little bit I am going to have an iPad to mess around with. I am going to be trying out some multimedia apps, posting what I think and what I've been doing.

Tutorial 2

Is this tutorial we are going to take 4 photos of the same person in a room and merge them into one photo to make it appear that the person is in multiple places in the room at the same time that the photo was taken.

Here are the starting photos.

1 - You don't have to use the images I am using, but if you are the image, I used as the background was the one with the person using the computer. Double click the layer to unlock it so you are able to modify it if you need to.

2 - Next open up all the other pictures you want to include in the document (file--> open--> select photos)

3 – go to each of the photos you just opened and select the whole image by pressing Ctrl – A or Select --> All from the menu then paste into the open document that you are using as the background. You can paste by pressing Ctrl – V or Edit --> Paste from the menu.

4 - Once the images are pasted into the same document as the background image you can arrange the layers any way you want but i suggest you arrange them in a way that they appear to be near to far.

5 – Now select a layer to begin editing. You can hide other layers by clicking on the eye beside the other layers. This might make the editing a little easier.

6 – Enter quick mask mode by pressing Q or the quick mask icon on your tool bar.

7 – While in quick mask mode select the lasso tool and roughly trance around the person your going to pop out of the layer.

You want to get the selection as close to the edge of the person as you can to make the image a little more natural looking. FYI if your doing an image that has people that have shadows make sure to include the shadows.

8 - You can fine tune the selection by using selecting the brush tool (B or or the brush icon on the toolbar) while in quick mask mode. Press X to switch the mask mode to either add mask or subtract. In this case you want to have it taking mask away. If you mess up you can add back on by pressing X.

9 – Exit quick mask mode by either pressing the icon on the tool bar or by pressing Q. Once you exit quick mask mode you will see your selection outlined with a dotted marquee line. Select the inverse of this selection (shift + ctrl + I or select---> inverse) and hit delete to leave just the image of the person you wanted to pop out of the photo.

10 – Repeat Step 8 & 9 for all layers except the layer you are using as the background.

Once you are finished your image should look like this.

Wednesday at school.

almost done the second tutorial. Just need to take a few screenshots to complete it. It'll be posted on here once  its done. I've been exploring sound cloud a bit starting to follow a few people, listening to their music. seems like a decent place for people to share stuff with others. might have to give it a try.

Today

Today at school I got Ian to stand in a few different places so I could take his picture for the next tutorial. I already have the final image done so keep an eye out for the next tutorial. Also Ian just got me to take a bunch of photos of a fellow school mate who just  happened to be wrapped up in tape LOL should be interesting. ill post that image as soon as its done!

Brainstorm Time

School Today, going to look at some photoshop tutorial videos for some examples. Also I'm going to research some screen capture programs again to see if I can find something that might work. Also I need to come up with another tutorial idea. I was thinking about doing a photo with multiple images of a person doing different things in a room or environment.

Next Tutorial

Next tutorial I'm going to do is going to be a little more complicated, today I'm going to take a few photos and start the editing. Stay Tuned

Photoshop Tutorial

What we are going to do is take this photo with the flowers and single out the yellow flower in the middle and turn everything else into grey scale to single out the yellow flower.  If your going to do this tutorial you dont have to use this photo you this procedure will work for any image.

Step 1: Open the photo you want to edit  in Photoshop

Step 2: Go over to the layers window on the right hand side of the screen and right click on the only layer you should have which will be defaulted to the background layer. Once you right click select layer from background

You will then have the option to name the layer and hit ok. This will unlock the layer and allow you to edit the image.

Step 3:  Select quick mask mode by selecting the last button down in the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen.

Step 4: Select the Brush tool by either pressing the letter B or by selecting the tool from the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen.

Step 5:  The easiest way to single out the one flower is to color it with the brush tool while in quick mask mode. Insted of doing everything but the flower.

Once flower is covered in red you want to go and get the red as close to the edge of the flower as you can and it helps if you have a little bit of feather on the edge aswell which will help blend the yellow flower into the grey sruuounding it once we are done. To delete some of the red that you have put on the flower all you need to do is switch the colors just above the quick mask tool. Switch it from black to white by clicking the arrows above it and you are now erasing or by pressing X.

Step 6: Once you have everything masked off you can exit the quick mask tool to reveal your selection.

Step 7: Create  new layer, and then copy the selection of the yellow flower and paste it in the new layer.

Step 8: select the background layer adjust the saturation of the background image by selecting the adjustments menu on the right hand side of the window. Turn the saturation all the way down to that everything but the flower that you masked off turned grey.

Once the editing is complete your image should look like this!

Tutorial...

Finished the tutorial, finally. I was going to email it to Ian but the file is retardedly huge due to the screen shots I put in the tutorial because I pasted them directly from Photoshop, so I am unable to email the file. So... I'm going to find a way to shrink the size and get it sent off. Also I am going to post the tutorial on the blog.

I am so smrt

So I'm sitting in class and staring to do this photo tutorial and realized when I started to edit the photos they were super low res because I didn't save the attachments properly so I can't really do anything properly. Imagine a mechanic trying to work on a car but its the size of a hot wheels replica, that is what I feel like at the moment. So for now I am back to square one and have to re-think some options here.

School

In school today, working on Photoshop tutorial number one. Hopefully I will have it posted here in a bit.

Still Thinking

Still thinking of an idea for the Photoshop tutorial, I'm thinking I may scrap the screen capturing and maybe do something with screen shots instead. May possibly take the morning tomorrow and go to school to work on it.

Laptop

Got a laptop this afternoon. Gonna make doing this blog/school work a little easier! Awesome to be mobile and awesome to get new toys. I looked at a program called Camtasia Studio for screen capturing but turns that program sucks ass. I think I'm going to have to use the one Mr.Kent suggested, screencapture o matic...

This Week

Just met with my teacher, Ian Kent. This week he wants me to make a couple Photoshop tutorials and post them on here. Probably going to make a video with a screen casting program or make a step by step guide with screen shots, haven't decided yet. I'm going to feel around for some ideas and test out the screen capture program to see how it works. Also need to come up with an idea for a tutorial, any suggestions?

Water Drop

This is a photo of a water drop, I had saw this tutorial in a magazine and decided to give it a try. What I did was suspend a plastic bag filled with water above a bowl filled with water. I then poked a hole in the bag and let it drip. After taking about 400 photos I stopped and went through them only to find 10 that were really worth keeping.

For the settings on my camera for this photo I used a fast shutter combined with the flash to freeze the water drops in place. I also used an aperture of 4 to blur out the background. Aperture settings allow you to control how much light passes through the lens and on to the image sensor. The lower the number the less light comes in giving less detail in the background.

For processing for this photo I only really turned the vibrance up a little just so it wasn't totally plain. Also turned  up the blacks a slight bit to help darken the background and add some more depth to the ripples in the water.

Valley Sunset

This photo was taken last summer in my Mom's back yard in Annapolis Royal. As I've shown in a few photos already I'm a pretty big fan of silhouettes as well sunsets. Sunsets give you awesome colours and silhouetting lets you put focus into a certain area of photo.

For this photo I did what i usually do for silhouettes and put my camera in program mode and dropped the exposure setting to -2 which allowed the foreground go black and become a silhouette.

This photo for processing I turned up the vibrance to about 95% to really bring out the colors and also turned the blacks up quite a bit to make the silhouettes more crisp and to also to bring out the little bit of cloud.

Another Wave

This photo was taken in the same place as the last wave on the same day. By looking at this photo its hard to grasp how big this wave actually was it had to be at least 15ft, maybe more. I like this photo because the wave is a perfect shape, the colour of the water, and the mist coming off the top of the wave. I also like how the wave is coming into an almost fits perfect into the mouth of this cove.

For this photo I had my camera on program to automatically set the aperture and shutter speed based on the exposure I wanted to have. For this photo the exposure was normal. Nothing special for this one.

For the processing I turned up the vibrance to bring out the colours in the sky and water. I had also turned up the blacks a bit to boost the shadows.

Wave

This photo was taken at Prospect High Head, which is a protected area between Prospect Village and Shad Bay. The area is mostly rocks and cliffs, but has a walking trail that winds through. On windy days the waves crash up over the rocks as seen in this photo.

For this photo I put my camera in shutter priority and adjusted the shutter speed to 1/15 which allowed the crashing wave to blur and kind of almost wrap around the rock rather than just freezing it in place. Once i took the image i noticed it was a little over exposed.

for post processing I adjusted the vibrance to make the sky and foreground a bit more colourful. Because the image was a little over exposed due to the slow shutter speed, I brought down the exposure to -2. I also turned up the blacks a little to bring out the shadows in around the water to give more detail to the wave so didn't appear like a flat white mass.

Butcher Hill Falls

These two photos are of Butcher Hill Falls in Upper Stewiacke. I took these photos because I always wanted to take a long exposure of a waterfall. These photos were taken in early May 2011. These two photos are my all time favourite photos that I have taken.

For Camera settings for these photos I put my camera in shutter priority and set the shutter speed for 30 seconds. I then put my camera on my tripod to minimize movement and screwed what is called a neutral density filter on the end of my lens. ND filters allow for longer exposures during the day by limiting the amount of light that enters the lens. less light equals a longer shutter speed. ND filters come in different strengths. for this photo I used 2 filters put together, ND4 and ND8,  to allow me to get a 30 second exposure.

For these pictures I used different processing settings. For the top photo I turned vibrance all the way down, making the photo almost black and white to make the wet rocks darker and to make the water stand out. Then I turned the saturation up to bring out the colour of the grass and the trees enough that it wasn't overpowering the rest of the image. If I would have done it the other way around the wet rocks would have come out slightly green because of the moss and algae drawing more focus to them instead of the water.

The bottom image I wanted to look a little more traditional so I turned up the vibrance and the blacks a tiny bit to boost colour and shadows and left the saturation alone.

Rabbit on the run

I took this photo last summer while on vacation in the valley. This is one of our pet rabbits named Jasper. I snapped this from a ways a way with my 80-200mm lens. I think I got pretty lucky to catch him on a dead run in this position.

With the 80-200mm lens on my camera I put my camera in shutter priority so it would automatically set the aperture based on the shutter speed and exposure settings I choose. I wanted to use a fast shutter speed to freeze jasper in the frame without having any motion blur. the shutter speed I used was 1/1000 with a normal exposure and ISO of 100.

For post production, all I really did for this photo was turn up the vibrance enough to brighten the grass. turned the blacks up a little bit to make shadows a little darker. I also turned the brightness down by a few points points tone down the white on Jasper's head and back.

Shad Bay Hike

I took this photo just outside Halifax in Shad Bay on a Saturday morning last summer. Decided to take this photo because the water was really calm. Seemed like a good time to blacken out the foreground and focus on the background of the blue sky with the island in the middle.

I used the a similar technique to the sand beach photo where I set the camera on program and set the exposure for -2. the background is so bright the camera lets the light in and turns the foreground into a silhouette. this is probably one of my favourite techniques you will see me use it quite a bit.

Again where the photo was taken as RAW format it does require processing with Photoshop. So basically all I did with this was turn up the vibrance until the colour of the sky and water were standing out. Then I boosted the blacks to make the silhouettes blacker.

Sand Beach

I took this photo on Sand Beach in Liverpool, if I can remember correctly it was taken at the end of July 2011. This photo is one of my favourites because I'm a big fan of colourful backgrounds with silhouettes in the foreground. I shot this photo because of the way the setting sun was making the sky look. but taking the photo is only half of what needs to be done to get it to look like this.

When I took this photo I had the camera on on program mode which automatically sets the aperture and shutter speed based on the amount of exposure I want to have. With ISO at 100 to minimize noise I set the camera for a -2 exposure to make the trees in the foreground come out as silhouettes.

Where I shoot photos in RAW format most of the time there has to be post processing done with Photoshop, or another editing program to get the colours and details to pop out. RAW format is the raw data that the camera's image sensor captures at the time when the photo is taken. So in Photoshop in the Camera RAW editor I turned the vibrance up to about 85% to bring out the colours and turned the saturation up a tiny bit. Also boosted the blacks a bit to help bring out the silhouettes. After turning up the vibrance up the image was pretty grainy so I ran a de-noise filter on the image to flatten out the noise.

A New Start

I started this blog to post stuff for the Multimedia Course I'm taking to finish my high school education. I'll be posting Photos, Slide shows, videos and anything else that has to do with multimedia on here. Stay tuned!