Welcome to Course THREE! In the first two Modules you will gain a more professional-level understanding of the Design Elements that artists have used throughout history to create successful compositions. Arranging the Elements in ways that lead viewers through their compositions is an essential craft for photographers no matter whether their subject matter is pure documentary or vividly exotic personal expression. In Modules 3 & 4 we survey the essential elements of post-photography image management, using Adobe(tm) LIGHTROOM(tm). Image adjustment software designed for Smartphone photographers rounds out the Course. Since even photographers whose mainstay is a high-end DSLR also must admit to Smartphone use occasionally, and photographers who only use a Smartphone will usually admit that they want to step over to a "regular" camera at some point, there is something for everyone here! Let's get started with Module One!
Pixlr Pro-Desktop - VSCO-Pixel - Camera+ - Pixart
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From the course by Michigan State University
Principles of Photo Composition and Digital Image Post-Production
547 ratings
Michigan State University
547 ratings
Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR
From the lesson
Photo Editing Fundamentals 2.0: SmartPhone Apps
Whether you are an iPhone, Galaxy, or other SmartPhone user, you know you have an exciting device to use as a camera, but you probably feel that you are not using all of its potential. You will learn how the addition of solid Photo "APPs" can extend the capability of your device, turning it into a powerful photo-editing computer as well as a more sophisticated camera.
Meet the Instructors
Peter GlendinningProfessor
Art, Art History, & Design
Mark Valentine SullivanAssociate Professor
Music / Innovation Hub
[MUSIC]
Now, let's look at the features found in the desktop version, Pixlr Pro.
First, let's open a file.
Now, you see, along the left side,
icons that correspond to the main categories of Pixlr operations.
The top one is called fast.
One of the distinctions it relates to everything within the fast menu
is that it operates on the image as a whole.
And as you'll see later, when we talk about the influence mask,
which allows you to selectively change the image,
fast is a category that bypasses the influence mask.
In other words, when you choose things from the fast menu,
it will ignore whatever settings have been created in the influence mask.
So, let's look at the categories.
Clicking on fast reveals them.
They should look familiar, and it should be clear that there are very close
resemblances to many of the operations found in Lightroom's Develop module.
The first one is crop, and
the operation is done in the same way it's done in Lightroom.
Select after dragging, release, and
the dotted lines show what will remain after the image has been cut.
You also can do this by width and height with these slider bars, or
by typing in numbers, and there are a number
of prefabricated ratios that you can crop to too, if you so wish to do so.
So, we're going to cancel that.
Now, if I go to straighten, this also is very similar to what you find within
the Lightroom Develop module, although, there are some prefabricated changes that
are found in different places in Lightroom that are found in a single panel here.
For instance, you can rotate the image 90 degrees, or
you can change right and left, or you can change top and bottom.
You can also change the angle by moving the slider to the right or to the left,
and you can do that incrementally or you can see a numerical representation.
Again, if you don't wish to retain any of those changes, instead of hitting apply,
you can simply cancel out of it and go back to the previous state.
Resize is a way to resize the image either upward or
downward from its present sizing to lock the aspect ratio, if you want.
Cancel out of that.
Auto contrast,
as the name implies, increases the contrast within the image as a whole.
If I click this, you'll notice that
the milkweed fibers are now sharply etched and clear,
instead of slightly blurred and out of focus, particularly away from the center.
Once again, I'll cancel out of that and go back to the original state.
Auto fix attempts to set various things about the image to what it thinks will be
the optimal state for the image, including the color and so forth.
Once again, we'll cancel out of that.
Heal is very similar to the heal function within Lightroom, so is red eye.
And then, we have another category here, the second from the end, called focal.
If I click that, you'll see these concentric circles pop up.
It's also possible if you want to use a linear version.
We'll go back to the circle for a second.
If I pull that out and pull the inner circle out a bit and hit apply,
you may notice that the areas within the circle on the outside get more blurry.
We can undo that, could go to
the square version, same kind of thing.
You can adjust all of these gradient markers, pull things out.
You can have a color boost.
You can glow.
You can change blur, and if I apply that,
you should notice some changes in the image itself.
Finally, there's something called splash.
Splash has to do with adding color to a black and white image.
Here, we've added color and boosted the color, and
that's all of the operations within the fast menu.
Now, let's look at further categories within the dekstop version of Pixlr.
Underneath fast, we see the next category.
It's called refine.
When I click on that, it opens yet another menu, which has color allowing for
various kinds of color modification and so forth.
Within the chosen image, you can cancel out of that contrast,
clear the effects contrast.
It could be that our mask is affecting that too,
because it looks like it was left on.
Blur allows you to apply blur to the whole image, or
if you had used an influence mask, it would only affect what you had chosen, or
within the influence mask, if you wanted to change what the mask itself affects.
You can go into this little three lines next to the circle and
you can invert that function, or you can duplicate it, or rename it,
which allows you to affect whether the selected part is changed, or
whether the selected part is unchanged and then everything else is changed.
Sharpen module does, as its name would lead you to think, and so
it is the smooth.
And then finally, in this category,
there's one called double exposure which does as you would think.
It takes the selected first image and
allows you to choose another image to combine with it, and
to use certain kinds of perimeters to determine how the mixture occurs.
In this case, we see the image of
the Puget Sound is floating on top of the first image.
And I can move it around.
And in this case, I'm going to shift it up, so
that I can just see those trees in the water.
And then, I'll move in the sides, so that it corresponds.
Notice that, in the top, where the second image occurs,
it's blocking out everything in the flower, except for the part that's
controlled by the mask, which I can turn off, and then it blocks out everything.
Like Photoshop, you can control which image is transparent and
how transparent it is,
which allows you to control how much of the image underneath it shows through.
So, if I take this down to zero,
you'll notice that all you see is the first image.
Back up to 100, the top image completely blocks out the one underneath.
Around 50, you notice you get a blend of the two, and
I'm going to allow even more of a bit of a blend.
And this is now around 33, I hit apply, and you see the water behind the flower.
If you wanted to go into this with the other tools and
make the boundary a little bit smoother, and blur the edge so
that it doesn't have this sharp division between the water and the flower,
you could do that, but I'm not going to do that right now.
And that's the last in this particular menu.
The third item underneath fast, refine, is effect.
There are a number of preset effects.
You can scroll through them, and choosing one of them applies it to the image.
You can apply it to keep, or if you wish, you can undo,
back out, and go to a different image.
Similarly, underneath effect, there's a category called overlay,
which allows you to put various kinds of prefabricated images,
patterns, textures, and so forth on top of your image, much like
creating a double exposure, except in this case, using a texture or a pattern.
Underneath overlay, we have a menu called
border which has various border effects that can be applied to the image.
Or you can apply sprocket hole patterns that make it look like film, and so forth.
Underneath border, we have a category called stylize which allows you
to create various kinds of stylized transformations of your image.
You can apply those or you can back out of them.
Then, finally, the last two categories allow you to add things to the image,
in this case, stickers allows you to put various kinds of prefabricated graphics on
top of your photographic image, and type allows you to put text in to the image
So, there are several other apps that have some of the features of Lightroom and
Photoshop, including the relatively new Lightroom for Mobile.
Lightroom for Mobile has many of the features found in Lightroom Desktop.
And you can make collections and import photos, or
take new photos with the Lightroom camera.
And you can apply presets or
use a developer strip that scrolls across the bottom of the screen
to create many of the same changes that can be created in the desktop version.
Another cell phone app that has a great deal to offer
is Camera Plus or Camera Plus Pro.
It has various filters that produce effects like the presets in Lightroom,
as well as a camera that includes a stabilizer function, burst mode,
and so forth.
Another cell phone app features both a camera and galleries, and
a range of effects that can be purchased in sets.
The sets of effects are modeled on the color and black and
white characteristics of a wide range of film types and film manufacturers
that many photographers came to treasure during the heyday of film cameras.
If you're not familiar with the characteristics of the various types of
film by those various manufacturers, it's still relatively easy simply to browse
the effects applied to an image, and develop a knowledge of what they can do.
The galleries also allow the photographer to browse and
publish images created with the VSCO camera and filters,
and to see images created by other users who work with VSCO devices.
And finally, there's also an app called Pixart.
It has a camera and effects panel, and a wide range of galleries,
contests, users groups, and so forth for
presenting your images and for sharing images created by others with Pixart.
And that about wraps up the introduction to some
of the core functions as the Lightroom and a few alternatives.
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