Photoshop Fun

Adding dynamic motion effects to a shot of a static car ~ just having fun experimenting with the Photoshop technique I’ve just picked up from the recent edition of the Digital Camera magazine…

From Rides

Actual shot of Roy's static car, taken last Sunday at the roadside leading to the entrance of Fairy Caves, Bau

From Rides

Edited shot with dynamic motion effects introduced

There are many ways to achieve this effect using Photoshop; I’ll just share a quick run thru on the tricks I applied to get it.

1. Enhance the image’s colors & tones by boosting the levels via the Levels Adjustment Layer & increasing the colors via the Hue/Saturation Adjustment
2. Select and extract the car from the background copy layer and paste the cutout as the top layer in the stack
3. Perform selective color saturation and add shine to the car by manipulating the Hue/Saturation and Levels Adjustment layers respectively
4. Add radial blur to the background image to give it a dynamic zoom motion
5. Increase the scale of the car cutout layer using Free Transform to mask any blurring on the edges of the car
6. Sharpen the detail of the car
7. Add vignette to the image & flatten the layers
   

Have fun~! =)

Photoshop-ing Tricks

A good friend of mine, Ehon gave us (me & loi) a basic crash-course on how to use the canggih-but-often-too-complex-to-newbies Adobe Photoshop CS photo editing software, before one of our lim teh session when he was back in town last year. He was once an apprentice of the fehmes Alvin Leong Photography Studio ~ which, he picked up his sound photography fundamentals *he's (Ehon) is probably one of the better photographers i've known in person, who DOESN'T own a DSLR; well, maybe he does now =p * from & knows how to work magic using the Photoshop like a seasoned Counter Strike gamer. That was my brief introduction to photo-editing & i have been hooked on it from then on; i had only my W810i camera phone back then & i could manage shots that are mediocre at best, crappy when blown up; so i really needed a software that could enhance my photos. That was long before my DLSR gear came along, but even now i still have a knack for editing photos, just coz i like it. =)
Well, i'm gonna share some generic editing techniques i've picked up, that i use on some of my photos; i'm using CS2:

1. Unedited photo

2. Duplicate another layer via copy by pressing "Ctrl+J"; go to "Filter", select "Blur" & then "Gaussian Blur" with a magnitude of 6.0;

3. Go to "Filter", select "Distort" & then "Lens Correction"; in the "Vignette" section tweak the amount to +100 to whiten the edges of the photo

4. Still on the duplicate copy layer, change the layer "Blending Options" to "Overlay"; next tweak the level, contrast & color saturation to add depth & bring out dramatic-ness of the photo.

5. Finally, add watermark to it & voila, you have a photo that looks like an advert print! =p
*Nothing much to shout about, but it looks much more striking than the un-edited piece, don't you think?

Specimen: Gucci perfume & deodorant stick ~ Valentine's gift courtesy of my baby =)
Camera gear: EOS450D EFS 18-55mm standard kit lens
Settings: 1/15s ; f4.0 ; ISO800 ; JPEG format