For this project I started by looking through my pictures and found a picture of elephants from a zoo trip this summer.  I then went to adobe stock to find a free texture to use and found a black and white texture image to use. I then in placed the two images into my workspace and look through the layer blending options and found overlay was the option I liked the most but turned down the opacity to 66 percent. I added a film grain affect to add a little variation. I looked and found a preset for a sepia affect and applied it. I had to fiddle with it to get the colors and shadows right and added a level adjustment because older photos shadows lighten over time. I decided I wanted a frame and found one on adobe stock that I liked and I placed it and adjusted my other layers to fit in the frame and trimmed my sepia affect with a layer mask. I added "Hogle Zoo, May 30th 2023" in a cool script font and I was done.

The PSD file

I really enjoyed this assignment. I used a touch screen laptop and pressure sensitive pen to paint. I started with using a mixer brush to lay down a gradient in the sky and used a smudge brush to smooth it a bit. Then I went looking for more brushes on the adobe site and found a set of impressionist brushes I loved and ended up using throughout the design. I used a small point of a brush called the Seurat Control brush to create clouds that were visually interesting yet soft and fluffy. I followed that with using another mixer brush called Bristle Cut to make the river although it ended up blending together. I moved on to painting the distant groves of trees and used multiple brushes in the Impressionist category called French Point Small, French Sharp Block, and French Sharp Mess. I made the fields the same way as the river. I made the trees by stippling the Seurat brush in a large size and different colors to make leaves and add depth. I finished by making the rocks with the Van Gogh brush and mixing using a mixer brush with the wetness value all the way to blend and add a little more base color. I added a black background to finish.

The PSD file

For this project I chose a picture of my grandpa who died when my mom was young so old pictures are all that we have, and as time passed some have gotten damaged and this seemed like a good time to take a swing at fixing one. I mostly used the healing brush tool for most of the damage and realised I needed to use other tools once I was 75% completed. I used the clone tool and even a little blending brush with no color to get the ear with the most damage to look the most natural. I used a patch to fix some texture in the hair and for the last thing I snuck in a photo filter with a layer mask. As I went I had a few issues with things looking unnatural especially his nose and upper lip but as I was doing this I learned he had a cleft lip when he was born so that made it hard to perfect. I like how it turned out and I think this is an awesome skill to have.

The PSD file

The timing of this assignment lined up with the assignment to format, design, and prepare a book for print in another of my classes so it was continent to use the book I was using for that project as the basis of this project. I chose War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I found the original Illustrations from the french publication of the book that have now entered the public domain and used them to add to the design. I also liked the way the story was told by someone in the scenario and not in the third person or with any omni intelligent narrator and with that in mind I used typefaces that looked like old labelmakers or typewriters to make it feel less like a book and more like a journal. I finished and looked through the requirements and had to add a few things in the eleventh hour like adding a clipping mask to the picture on the back, warping the author on the spine and using the pen tool to make a shape to shade the light beam on the cover. I like the product. overall and feel I did well.

The PSD file

I really love how my poster turned out. I started by doing some sketches and decided on a hand design with the team standing in front. When I got to work in Photoshop I started by placing a hand image and making a selection and saving it. I followed by adding a color layer and city image and stylized and cut them using a layer mask and the selection I saved. I then added the Student team image, removed the background and stylized the image. I added the text and it still felt lacking so to embrace the bright colors I used a halftone texture for the background to add to the comic book horror theme. I think it turned out great and am very proud of it!

The PSD file