Barbara Johnston's Project 3: Photos from a rainy summer in Alaska.

In the summer of 2008, we took our sailboat down the Columbia River, crossed the bar, and turned right.  We didn't stop for more than a day or two, here and there, until we reached Glacier Bay.  People in Alaska told us it was the rainiest, coldest summer in at least 50 years.  My overwhelming impression was of luxuriant greenery, abundant wildlife, astonishing Indian art and incessant rain.  I tried to recreate that feeling in my project 3 composite image, above.  Also check out my project 3 webpage, and our journals from that trip.

Here are my answers to the questions for this project:

1. Which selection tools did you think worked best for specific types of elements in an image?

• I selected the salmon bowl and the dogwood flowers using the quick selection tool.  This tool worked well for these images.
• For the Tlingit art panel, I used the rectangular marquee tool.  I found that the panel (which I had straightened using the perspective crop) was not actually quite geometrically rectangular.  The rectangular marquee tool was good for figuring that out, although it meant I had to go back and re-crop the original photo. See further discussion of this issue in the answer to question 4 below, under the second bullet.

2. What tools and strategies that you used to create your simple composite will you use in future projects?

I expect I'll use all or nearly all of the tools that we were introduced to in this project.  The following were particularly interesting and useful to me:

•  The quick selection tool seems very intuitive and flexible in finding defined barriers.  The resulting selection boundaries are easy to modify by flipping back and forth between adding to the selection and subtracting from the selection, using different sized paintbrush/cursors.
• The layer style tool really enhances the selected image after it has been cut from its background.  The drop shadow effect makes the image pop off the screen.
• The transform tool, used primarily to reduce the size of images seems very useful.
• The Move+Alt tool to duplicate a selection also seems very useful.
• Use of multiple layers seems very important to create multiple variants of an image you can go back to and modify further.
• The gradient overlay works to add a nice atmosphere to photographs, knitting together the entire composite composition.

3. In this module, you created the transparent images. How do you believe these images will be used in your future web design projects? What file type did you save your transparent images as?

I'm uncertain how transparent images will be used in the future.  One use that comes to mind is enabling the placement of something such as a logo on a variety of backgrounds.  Obviously, creating a transparency does a great job of freeing an element of a photo from its background, and enabling creative sorts of layering.  How precisely that will play out, I'm not sure.  The transparent images are saved in a png24 format.

4. What challenges did you experience in the process?

• Probably the biggest challenge was remembering to save the file in psd format and/or remembering to create every version of the photo I would need to complete this project.  For example, the first time through the dogwood picture (a fairly difficult selection process because of all the intricate turns of the leaves), I managed to save only a small png file, no jpgs, and no psd file.  The second time through the dogwood picture (doing the difficult selection again), I managed to save everything except a larger png file.  Even worse, before I saved the psd file, I didn't manage to create a layer that included the drop shadow effect.  So third time's the charm, I selected the image again, and created png files (properly using layers this time).  None of the other images took three times through to get it all right, but I think they did all require going back to the beginning for a second try.
• The next big challenge I faced was cropping the image of Tlingit art.  The original photo shows the image offset to one side, so perspective crop had to be used.  I also needed to have a margin around the art panel so that there would be something to turn transparent, black and white for this project.  The first perspective crop I did wasn't accurate enough, as I found out when I tried to use the rectangular marquee selection tool.  I went back and did it several more times, and finally discovered that if I change the cropping overlay from "thirds" to "grid", it gives more lines to match to the edges of the panel and the vertical siding on the building.
• The gradient overlay was intended, I think to be the background of our composite composition.  But I really wanted to create the look of fog, so it was more suitable in front.  I tried using colors from the images for the gradient, but I really wanted more of a dark grey blue, so I ended up using independently selected colors for the gradient.
• When I though I was all done, I noticed that some transparency (grey and white checkerboard) showed up behind the dogwood in a few places.  So I added a fill layer (black) behind everything, which --even though it hardly shows -- seemed to enhance the look of the dogwood.

5. What keyboard shortcuts are you using regularly now?

• Open bracket: [ to increase the size of the cursor/brush, and close bracket: ] to decrease the size of the cursor/brush.
• Ctrl-X to make the background transparent.
• Crtl-Z to undo the last editing step
• Ctrl-D to deselect
• Ctrl-0 to fit image on screen
• W to use the quick selection tool
• Alt to change the quick selection tool from "add to image" to "subtract from image".