PROJECT 52 WEEK 1: RESOLUTION

So I have always thought that the yearly photo project ideas were an awesome way to improve your photography, but have always been afraid to commit to one. I am a huge procrastinator and committing myself to a deadline scares the heck out of me. But this year I decided to bite the bullet and do not one, but two projects. They are both 52 week projects so I think I can handle this. The first one is over at Life with my 3 Boybarians and the first weeks theme is Resolution. I have had a hard time with this theme because I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions. I decided to just head outside with the camera and see what I could come up with. Here are my three new New Year's Resolutions.

RESOLUTION #1: Spend more time with friends.

RESOLUTION #2: Learn Yoga

RESOLUTION #3: More road trips with the family.

Plato, MO Portrait Photographer: JMRichards Design

One of my favorite subjects to photograph. My son who is 18 months old.

I love the little beads of sweat on his nose!

Plato, MO Portrait Photographer: JMRichards Design

Some of my favorite Portraits.

Plato, MO Landscape Photographer: JMRichards Design

Scenes from the beautiful place I call home!

Plato, MO Wedding Photographer: Kyson and Katie

I had so much fun photographing the beautiful bride and handsome groom!

Plato, MO Photoshop: Removing objects in your photos.

My brother took this photograph recently and asked me if I could take out the yellow car. I love a challenge so I told him I would do it. At first I thought I could just use the clone tool and wipe out the car, but I soon found that it was going to be much harder than that!   

Original Photograph

Minus the yellow car.

The first step in removing the yellow car is to use the rectangle marquee tool to select the part of the backgound that I want to use to replace the yellow car.

Next I hit Ctrl-J then Ctrl-T, this changes the selection box to look like this

Now I just grab the side of the rectangle and drag it over the yellow car. After I am finished that I hit enter, and I have erased most of the yellow car!

Now in the layers window I make sure to select the background image again, then I repeat the step to remove that last bit of car on the bottom of my image. It is important to select the background again or else you will get this warning.  



It can be pretty frustrating to keep getting the same warning over and over and not know why. I kept thinking "it worked the first time, why won't it now?"  So once I finished erasing the car my image looked like this.

Better, but I still need to work on the lines left when I "erased" the car. I flatten my image, to merge all of the layers into one, and then I select the brush tool. I the eyedropper to select the background color and paint over that pesky line at the top of my screen. I also paint over the dark spot above the line and the shadow left by what was the yellow car. I also paint over that antenna above the red cars windshield. Now my picture looks like this.

It is getting closer, only a few more steps.  If I use the brush tool to paint over the line towards the bottom, it blends the floor into the wall to much, so I need to use the patch tool. This is an amazing tool and can replace the clone tool for just about any job. 

I just select the area I want to patch and then drag the selection to an area that has the colors I want to replace it with, and magically the line dissapears. Now if you have a real steady hand you can select then entire line at once, but I have found I get better results if I only select a small section at a time.  Here is my picture now.

The last thing I do is run an action I found on The CoffeeShop Blog. It is called CoffeeShop 2020 and it brightens and sharpens the image a ton. I stumbled upon The CoffeeShop Blog while looking for a way to erase this yellow car and I absolutly love this blog. Rita does a great job showing you how to get the most out of your photographs.  I recommend you go check it out.  So here again is my finished picture, once I have run the last step.



As I mentioned before, I found a tutorial about how to remove the yellow car on The CoffeeShop Blog, and I feel like I need to give credit where it is due, so here is the link to that tutorial Coffee with Morgan. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section. Thanks for looking.