Digital Photography

Create Special Effects

I. There are over 100 Filter Effects in Adobe PhotoShop Elements. 

A. We will look at just a few using a image we created earlier

B. Open My WawelCastleandClouds.psd which you save earlier in the My Results folder on the C:\ drive

II. In the Layers palette click on the Background Copy Layer

A. .  This will allow you to apply special effects to the sky portion of the image

B. Open the Filter menu and choose Artistic, then click on Colored Pencil

C. Experiment with the Pencil Width, Stroke Pressure and Paper Brightness sliders, clicking OK to apply the various effects to the sky and using the Undo button to reverse the changes

D. Continue experimenting using other Artistic filters (Cut Out, Dry Brush, Film Grain, etc.) to modify the appearance of the sky

III. Now, in the Layers palette, click on the Castle layer

A. .  This will allow you to apply special effect to the castle portion of the image

B. Open the Filter menu and choose Texture, then click on Cracuelure

C. Experiment with the Crack Spacing, Crack Depth and Crack Brightness  sliders, clicking OK to apply the various effects to the castle and using the Undo button to reverse the changes

D. Continue experimenting using other Texture filters (Grain, Mosaic Tile, Patchwork, etc.) to modify the appearance of the castle

IV. You now have some idea of the variety of effects that can be obtained. 

A. Open EcolaPark.jpg and BlueDreams.jpg to see some examples of what can be done using Filters

V. Create a Panorama

A. A Panorama is a number of individual images “stitched together” (the computer matches them pixel by pixel) to create a larger (either wider or taller) image.

Take a series of overlapping images like these:
And combine them to create this:

B. Open the File menu and choose Create Photomerge

C. In the Photomerge dialog box, click on Browse to choose the images you want to merge

D. Browse to the Student Files folder on the CD drive and highlight mountain1.jpg through mountain10.jpg (click on mountain1.jpg then Shift-click on mountain10.jpg).  These are photographs taken from the top of a snow covered mountain.

E. Click on the OK button.  The pictures will be loaded and processed (this may take a little while)

F. The result is a panoramic view from a mountain top.

G. In order to create a panorama, the original images must overlap by about 1/3^rd

1. Open the File menu, choose Open and the choose the mountain1.jpg image in the Student Files folder on the CD drive

2. Now open mountain2.jpg in the same folder

3. Place the mouse pointer in the blue Title Bar at the top of the mountain2.jpg image and drag it to the right so that both images are fully visible.

4. Note that the mountain peak in the foreground of mountain1.jpg which is about 1/3 of the way from the right edge of the picture is nearly at the left edge of mountain2.jpg.  This is the sort of overlap that is required to produce a good panorama.