Venetian Charm, O'Kieffian Wit

Leaning Toward Venice - © S. O'Kieffe, 2007

With her usual mastery, this is Sue's vision of the Door (remember, the original image is titled Pisa Door) - AND she sent steps along. Marvelous woman. Now read and learn. She even calls features by their correct names.

PART 1

1. Duplicated image.


2. Created a selection using rectangular marquee of right side of building.


3. Copied and pasted it into new layer.


4. Merged visible layers (Ctrl+shift+e)


5. Moved selection to left side of new layer.


6. Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal to create symmetrical image.


7. Set colors to default. Filters>Sketch>Photocopy.


8. Set blending mode to multiply.


9. Set blending mode of building to Hard Light. (This feature is possible in CS3)


10. Created adjustment layer.


11. At bottom of layer palette chose photo filter/cooling filter.


12. I wanted to put image on a slant. Transformed image (Ctrl/Cmd+T). Edit>Transform>Skew

PART 2

1. Chose photo of ocean water and adjusted size of image to correspond with image size of building


2. Created symmetrical image of ocean as described above in step one


3. Dragged image of ocean onto image of building


4. Transformed image as described above to follow slant of building.


5. Set blending mode to Lighten.


6. I wanted it to look like water was running out from under the door and down the street, so I created a mask and set color to default.


7. Using black I painted out all parts of the ocean I didn’t want visible. The nice thing about masking is you can undo anything you want by painting in white. BLACK CONCEALS AND WHITE REVEALS

PART 3

1. Created reflection of building in water following steps in Part 1, step 1, except created a horizontal selection and flipped the image vertically


2. Created a clipping mask over layer with water. Clipping masks only affect one specific layer at a time and are created in the layer palette by holding down the alt/option key while selecting the desired adjustment.


3. I chose hue/saturation adjustment, and adjusted colors to hopefully reflect a more Mediterranean color.


4. I still wasn’t happy with the results of how the water looked. First I chose a color in the color palette that was a turquoise green color and chose it for the foreground color.


5. Then I went to Filters>Sketch>Photocopy, applied the filter and set blending mode to multiply. This is a handy technique I use in many of my mandalas, too, when I want to create a bit more depth in my images without it looking too much like an illustration.

PART 4

1. Final adjustment. Created hue/saturation adjustment layer at top of layer stack. Set hue at -12/Saturation at +57

Sue has also very generously attached a copy of her layer colour palette and wrote this about it: "Things will look a bit different because of the specific features in CS3 I used that eliminates the use of multiple layers. It’s a great and long overdue feature, and as far as I can tell so far the best thing about the newest version of Photoshop."

Marvelous, marvelous woman.

(Check here for the "Wall", including Diane's modern/urban-dream take, and freshman Irene's very first attempt at digital imaging)