Skip to main content

L Learns Photoshop

I was going to type my name because of the alliteration, but I don't want to use my name here and Novel Learns Photoshop doesn't work. I thought about Novel Needs Photoshop, but that's just daft.

Anyway, this is what I've been doing all evening, because I have nothing better to do, natch. Nor do I need to get up early and take the dog to the vet--ha ha.

Matt linked to a very cool site with fun things to do with Photoshop, and as I'm going to be using Photoshop more and more I decided to try some of them:

My car as a car from Cars by Pixar. It's not perfect by any stretch. I couldn't get the color blending right around the mouth--I'm still working on figuring out paths, levels, etc., but it gets the idea across.

Of course what I really want to use it for is a better version of this:

My car as Tonari no Totoro. As soon as we brought the car home last year I said, "I think it looks like Totoro, don't you?" (to my husband). "I bet we could Photoshop that and it would be funny. The Toyota symbol is in just the right place for his nose, and the grill looks like he's smiling." I had the eyes over the headlights at first but that just looked creepy. I'm torn as to whether it needs to be Totoro's more crescent shaped smile, but I like leaving it in the place of the grill. Again, I have a ways to go--I worked the left headlight (right in the picture) out nicely, but the right had too many shadows. If you go in close you'll find an overuse of the smudge tool. I couldn't change the color of the ears, just lighten them, but still not bad for no lessons. Each bit of tinkering teaches me something new.
Edit: My clever (and paranoid) husband pointed out that I probably don't want to have my license plate number plastered on the web.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adapting a book--The Prestige

I was completely blown away by the movie of The Prestige , and I thought then about reading the novel, but it seemed too soon. So I carried the author's name around with me for over a year (Christopher Priest) and then, finally remembered to buy it through an odd sequence of events. We watched The Painted Veil based on the novel by Maugham starring Edward Norton, and while I decided I didn't want to read The Painted Veil because of it's differences from the film (which was more romantic and tragic) it reminded me that I had wanted to read Fight Club (the movie version of which starred Edward Norton) and that reminded me that I had wanted to read The Prestige (which did not star Edward Norton, but was up against The Illusionist which did). Whew...so it's all Edward Norton's fault. The Prestige is a very good novel, and yet, the movie differs from it considerably. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly that means. The central premise is the same, AND HE...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yay! Dystopia!

So, I've been having a dystopia fest (this is not rare for me--I am fascinated by dystopian literature). I read Margaret Atwood's "Madadam," another book in the series that began with "Oryx & Crake." If you haven't read "Oryx & Crake," I can't recommend it highly enough. It just blew my mind when I read it several years ago. It is both dystopian--pre-apocolyptic, and post-apocalyptic. And watched "Metropolis," and "Things to Come." Then I consumed "The Hunger Games"--all three books--in three days. I had never read "The Hunger Games" before, and I found the writing hard to slog through. I understand that it was supposed to capture the simple, plain speech of Katniss, along with the present tense, but 1st person, present tense is a hard sell for a long book, let alone three. That said, the story was intriguing. I will be curious to see how they handle the horrifying violence of the l...
3 comments
Read more

The end of Cloud Atlas

Feel I must write this--promised it to myself, can I finish before midnight (when I said I would go to bed at 11)? Where was I? Oh, yes, section 5, where it gets interesting--because it's the future, at least 25 years, hopefully more. I say hopefully, because I don't want to be living in this future. The section is called "An Orison of Sonmi-451." An Orison (I had to look it up, proving I don't remember my Shakespeare) is a prayer, but in this future world where language has taken as many turns as in Orwell's 1984, it is more a confession or final statement. Sonmi-451 is a clone (as the name might suggest). The section is not entirely original. It owes much to Brave New World and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Bladerunner ). I find it interesting that 40 or so years ago--when Dick wrote his book he believed that future slaves would be Androids, replicants. Now we are much more likely to presume they will be clo...
5 comments
Read more