To fix photoshop rubbish

Just quickly - my problem last night that I compensated for by doing everything with an eraser - do the image you will want to change as a new layer. Edit --> transform - there you can warp, change perspective, rotate and change the size. Fudge.

Oh, and one other thing

Enter the Eckersley's competition - 500 dollars worth of spending there and a trip to Melbourne. Here is my own effort.

Chuck us a headie

There we go, a header has been inserted! I'm pretty sure I screwed it up in many ways - must ask Lea about how to actually resize images once I put them into my main image. And how to rotate and crop them. I seem to forget everything I know about photoshop every new time I try. But it's a pretty cool thing to be able to even make this happen at all. I have feelings that I will be in trouble for not enough image development of the text - I tried heaps of things but it looked so much better plain, I'm sorry!

In conclusion, here is an amusing photo of a friend of mine, in his more attractive years.

So lovely

I just rediscovered http://www.sesamemedia.com/ - an online magazine I used to look at religiously. First, it's pretty rad to be able to look at a magazine for free, especially one with such beautiful images and interesting interviews - various designers, photographers, etc.

The little girl in the first image is part of a colour in thing that you can do on the site. Get into it.

I didn't intend to put so many posts up in one evening, but now that I have a whole one follower I got a little carried away.

I think the photo shoots that they put in are just so elegantly done. Bubbles and ballerinas. What's not to love?

Scanning

My image to scan the fabric onto - scanned in black and white with 300dpi.
A rather lovely fabric that I scanned in using custom colour settings at 300 dpi. From an Australian girl who does all of her own fabric printing - Surface Art.

My first image - no need for descreen, the god of scanning loves me! (image from Australian Vogue, November 2009)
This image was scanned in at 75 dpi - the closest that my scanner lets me get to 72. Whilst this looks fine in the small format of a blog or other fancy internet stuff, when you have it as an A4 page you really see the difference - terribly pixellated.
150 dpi - Again, the same kind of quality once it's shrunk down to a tiny little internet thing. No real need to scan things in at this size, since memory is so cheap! However, in this case it's not really visible. This would probably be OK to print off, but 360 dpi would be nicer.
Ahh, 300 dpi (I'm working on inputting the amount of dpi on my scanner, but no luck so far). In essence, all we should ever be scanning with, if not more. So lovely and clear, all the edges perfect - and you can always make smaller, but you can't enlarge a small crappy image. These kinds of images can be blown up to make posters, used wherever you so choose. Happy days.

Image - Australian Vogue, March 2007.

Photoshop

Despite the irregular sizing of these photos, which

I am a little confused by, the basic point of this is to show the magic of layering on photoshop - hooray! You'll notice with the first that I rather foolishly put the layer with the girl in it behind the background - so there's a golden rule - background at the back, children. With the next photo, everything is more or less as it should be - background, text box, dots, shadow, and then girl.

More examples of what not to do - don't ever try and do that horrible shadow thing again, and don't put that layer on top of the girl, as it only further accentuates the messy edges. So excited to know how to do proper shadows now! This one is a slightly different version, with use of the burn tool, and with the dots over the girl - it actually creates an interesting effect, so I guess it's all about what you're actuall looking to do with all the fancy photoshopping business. In essence, be good to the layers, make sure you are doing your new things to the correct layer so that you don't end up with your girl hot pink and you background grey, and play around for the various effects you want. Ta-da.