Photoshop is Not as Hard as I Thought It Would Be

  When I first opened up Photoshop and tried to do something with it, I thought it was the stupidest, most obtuse, least user friendly piece of applications programming out there. Now, my opinion has changed somewhat. I missed most of the Photoshop tutorials, but I've always liked figuring things out on my own and getting things done (even if it's not done in the "correct" way). Once I figured out what "Transform" and "Adjustments" meant for Photoshop, everything got a lot easier. I'm glad to have done a very simple project like the Day in the Life of a Mercy Student collage.

  The pictures I took were, frankly, not very good. I tried to keep elements of photography in mind, but I have really poor timing, and my hands shake when I try to photograph things, so I'm never able to take a good picture on purpose. My camera is also cheap and of very low quality, so that didn't help either. I used the Rule of Thirds and tried to keep my pictures properly proportioned, but that didn't always work out. When I put the collage together, they often overlapped, too. Simplicity in a view for a picture is hard to come by at Mercy, so that's not really a technique I could use in my pictures. I used angle on a few, embarrassing myself in front of my friends. "What are you doing on the floor?" "Shhhhh... I'm taking your picture." A slightly more awkward situation came when I photographed the sophomores at the end of my lunch table and had to explain to them what in the world I was doing.

  So I'm not very good at taking pictures, but that's
what Photoshop's for isn't it? Can't photograph something to save your life? Well don't worry, there's software that can take away most of the imperfections in lighting, color, positioning, and even in your subjects' features. Cropping was especially useful to correct any misplaced "thirds" in the rule of thirds. My camera's terrible lighting pickup and color distortion were fixed through color adjustment. I finally figured out how to use layers in my work and edit specific layers. The biggest problem I had with Photoshop, I found out, was that the background layer is locked. If you unlock it, everything in the world becomes easier. The red eye tool still gave me some trouble, though, darkening an area about 10 pixels to the left of the eye. Seems like nothing, except that the eye itself was only about three or 4 pixels all together. So I guess not everything in the world is easier. Like I said, my camera is not very good. I ended up using a soft dark blue brush to fix it, but it looks alright. I used the selection tool to fix a picture that was okay in the foreground, but terrible in the background. Selecting the background, I made it a new layer and adjusted just its color and brightness, then flattened the image, so the whole thing looked fine. The flash went off on the camera, darkening the background to a gross yellow color, so it had to be fixed. Of course I used the transform tools to resize, rotate, and drag the pictures around. That's pretty obvious. I also used the color fill tool to make the background black. Photoshop is actually pretty easy to use, once you get the hang of it. I made 1/4 of my collage in one day, and the rest in about 20 minutes. It just takes some getting used to.