Musings From Paradise

This project had me take a snippet from some digitized 16mm Kodachrome movies (using Final Cut Express), resize the large file into something suitable for the web (using Quicktime) and, finally, modify the HTML code in WordPress so the movie is embedded in the post. There may be a short delay while the file loads for streaming, so please be patient.
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This photo of the iris was taken in a low light situation but the camera’s wide-angle lens still generated more depth-of-field than I wanted. (The flowers in the background detracted from the focus of the image). The solution was to select the flower, inverse the selection so the background was selected, and then apply a Gaussian blur focus so the background became less distracting.
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• 
  Open exported image from iPhoto (export original, not compressed)
• Double click layer, select default layer name, hit return so background is no longer locked (weird)
• Crop image with cropping tool and select “Crop” (Image Menu)
• Drag layer down to “New Level” icon (duplicates level) – work on this level so original isn’t compromised
• Layer > Adjustment > Layers creates a new adjustment layer
• Drag highlights bar (reduce highs) to brighten image
• With copy of photo layer selected, press option key and click “New Level” icon in layer palette
• Change mode to overlay (you will work on this layer, NOT original)
• Select brush (b) and make sure white is the foreground color
• “Paint” directly onto the overlay layer and reduce opacity to brighten shadow area
• To darken highlights (e.g.

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Below are images integrating the rock in different situations. There’s no order to these images and they illustrate Photoshop techniques I’ve learned in class. To maximize the width of the blog, these images are resized to 45% of original “Save For The Web” standard of 800 pixels (width).

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Think back to a time when two young siblings were introduced to a new toy.

“Can I have it,” was the immediate plea, a screaming duet.

This book is about such a toy—well, not really a toy but a new fun diversion in their lives. Grandma, always on the lookout for unusual birds in her yard, rediscovered a rock she’d snagged years earlier on the Oregon coast.
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These are the 2 “posters” required for this project. The two themes propaganda (a personal reaction connected to [but not exclusive of] the execution of Osama Bin Ladan) and the second a slight modification of the “movie” theme and morphed into a book announcement for the “book” project that follows this one.

To achieve the expanding text for “No War,” I used the Warp Text tool, selected the “Arc Upper” style, and zeroed out the Bend and Vertical Distortion and maxed out (100%) the Horizontal Distortion.
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