a Taj MuttHall Dog Diary: Photoshop Elements
Showing posts with label Photoshop Elements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photoshop Elements. Show all posts

Saturday, October 01, 2016

Dearth of Blog Posts--

SUMMARY: --but--but--so much to say to myself, to keep notes on, to share photos of, not to mention the photo themes from assorted places on the web!

So pretty much I don't post anything.

As a stopgap, here are a few quickie shots from this week from my corner of San Jose, CA.

Last Saturday--Who puts candy stores like this in my nearby mall? WHO WHO WHO? WHY? It goes on and on like this, and worse! Lucky to have gotten out for under $20 and under 20,000 calories! Yikes!


Later Saturday--Zorro and Chip play The Stupid Tunnel Game. Plus, considering that I haven't had an actual functioning agility dog in a year and a half, I sure do have a lot still lying around instead of put away. (Including a pile of rotting tunnel sandbags & containers--)



Sunday-- Mom is ill. Modern technology comes to the rescue--camera-microphones in key places in the house and a wireless monitor, so when I'm over there on a Sunday morning and having Diet Cherry Coketm and brownies for breakfast, I'll know if she's trying to sneak up on me and tell me that that is NOT an appropriate breakfast, Young Lady! Plus, meanwhile, my screensaver shows a photo of all of us "kids" wearing tshirts that she gave us one Christmas many years ago.


Monday-- 106.9 F (41.6 C) in my yard around 3:00.  That's also about when what is now known as The Loma Fire breaks out on Loma Prieta peak. By 5:30, the mushroom cloud has spread eastward across the south valley. Although that's about 12 miles from my house, I can see this clearly and also the flames at night. (As of last night, it had over 2,000 fire personnel working to contain it, had consumed almost 7 square miles (18 sq. km), and was anticipated to be contained by sometime this coming Monday. Contained, not out. I can smell the smoke. I can cough on the smoke.


Tuesday-- The story here, among those who have a prime view, is still the Loma Fire. I refuse to use a tripod, but still can clearly see flames and their glow in the thick, drought-fed smoke in the distance.

Wednesday--Don't let Chip pull the wool over your eyes, all innocent and pushing his Kong Wobbler food dispenser around like a neat and tidy dog--half an hour before the carpet wore a mantle of crumbled dirt clods and chewed-up sticks, and it will again half an hour from now. And WHO with dogs would have carpet that color ANYWAY?!

Thursday--I love my kitchen clock. Still makes me smile, 15 years after I found it at an art & wine show. Can you see how the second hand is like a little red corkscrew? Happy happy happy time!


Yesterday (Friday)-- Us iz bored, Human Mom? Nooooo! No pay usses no mind, H.M., go on work your computer on, on couch, iz OK.



Today--2nd annual Martial Cottle Park Harvest Festival. Walking distance behind my house. How cool is that?!


And WHO KNOWS what tomorrow will bring?! Maybe a movie? Some popcorn? Dog antics? Maybe even dog TRAINING? Sleeping? Good thing I have a camera to record it all!

Saturday, August 29, 2015

I have thousands of photos to sort, label, and edit

SUMMARY: So I decided to experiment with Photoshop Elements--

--the tool that is now on version 11 or so and that i've been using since about version 2.

You know how when you first get a creative tool, you play around with everything to see what it does?  Well, I wanted to get back to that mindset for a little while here, because one forgets (plus they keep adding features, go figure).

Just saving some of the fun I had.




The original JPEG from the camera.
I started with the RAW file, which was similar to the JPEG, and did the normal tweaks to get it to look better and normal.
This is playing with the Levels curve, sliding midtones pretty much all the way to the left.
Also I converted it to black & white and played with the various possible B&W filters/settings to get something that appealed to me (this is based on the Newspaper setting.

Mwah hah hah haaaaaa... Discovered what fun the Transform tool can be!
And the Recompose tool!

Holy Magic Extraction Tool, Batman! How did I miss that this awesome tool existed? Love love love how simple it was to extract part of the photo!
OK, kids, that's all for today. Go thou and create.