Designs, Designs, Designs

Designs, Designs, Designs, or rather to call it Graphic Designing... was never a fan or it, never thought of doing anything like it. But don't know why ah... people keep asking me to do it, and most of them think I'm some super talented graphic designer -_-

No leh my friends... I have no experience, and after last year's experience of designing a magazine for college I was left half dead... and yet again the past has came to haunt me yet again... now now now... arrgh... boss asked me to design something for our church's theme this year...

"Greater Him, Lesser Us"

Which is wanting the church this year to focus less on ourselves and focus more on God, which following John the Baptist's word when he said in John 3:30 "He must increase, but I must decrease."

Good theme, but why....... why want me to design?? Ahhhh worse is I do not know how to use photoshop somemore which made things harder, but.... hmmmm... as usual la it's moments like these that pushes you to the corner letting you know that there is no other way than to.... figure it out yourself... so.... in the end I somehow completed it... they wanted 4 designs, then change every 3 months~~ so here they are...
Have to give full credit to the person who took this picture, feeling guilty for taking it though, but no choice la...
Same goes for whoever took this picture, magnificent shot~~ of course if you've noticed I have not done any special editing, just added words~~ still learning photoshop though...
For this at least it is original since I took this picture, so not feeling much guilty~~
THIS one ah.... did all with Paint... yeah this was the first design before the other 3 came up... though it's nice but it's not printing friendly cause it's full black and white~~

Making the picture ain't enough, still gotta design it for the weekly bulletin.... so they all kinda look like this in the endAhh yes... not sure how I made it through, but thank God in the end...

Graphic Designing... never wanna step into it, but... somehow I feel this isn't the end of it.... so... ah yes, doing some courses on Photoshop now online, so confusing but... gotta learn~ who knows?? It might be a good skill to learn for future usage... whew~

Beginning of CNY

How did your Chinese New Year start this year???

Mine started off with a blast~ was planning to go to sleep d at 12am, then suddenly heard..

*BOOM BOOM BOOM*

Looked out the window and there it was... oh my goodness fireworks!!! Didn't have time to prepare the tripod!!! So all I could do was sit on bed steadily, and put camera on the bed to try to hold it steady... managed to capture shots like these~~
I like this, like a dragon rising into the sky
This was the nicest shot, but my hand shook... so you could see the blurness down there... -_-

After that, that was all... so I thought they might have a second wave, so went out to balcony and prepared tripod with camera, waited and waited... half and hour, still nothing... so... !@#$% fed up so went back to prepare to sleep... then after awhile again...

*BOOM BOOM*

"ARRRGH!!!"

So took camera and did the same posture as before, shouldn't have kept my tripod!!! But at least this time my posture was more steady~ so pictures turned out a little nicer~~






Ahh... if had a tripod then would've been nicer cause can put all the fireworks into one picture rather than capturing them one by one =)

Oh well... my CNY started off good... how about you???

How to do Selective Coloring

Chi Chi asked me how do some people make a normal picture like this...
And turn it into a black & white picture but with some colors poping out like this...
Tada!!

Well it's not a hard technique, but this is a technique I've learned in a magazine, and I know it would be great to teach everyone else so you can make beautiful pictures~ not sure what this technique is called... so I shall call it "Selective Coloring" since it's selecting the color you want in a a picture... hehe so here's a step by step tutorial, make sure you have Adobe Photoshop!! I'm still stuck in CS2 though XD
First : Open your photoshop
Second : Open your picture in Photoshop, easy ain't it?? =)
Now, go to the top, select Layers, then New Adjustment Layer, then Gradient Map.
This screen will pop out, just click ok~
And ok again~ there you go~!! Your picture then becomes black & white
Now here's the touching up part, make sure the colors there are, top black, bottom white, then select the paintbrush~
Choose your favorite size, and just PAINT!!! And as your painting, it's like it's wiping off the black and white from that specific paintbrush area, and returning it's original color to it~ don't be shy to zoom in or change the brush size to paint off the little small corners, and oh... if you made a mistake and overpainted some areas, just change the black color to white, then paint it over... weirdly...

Black Color - Turns the B&W (Black & White) to color
White Color - Turns Color to B&W

Oh well.. so when you're done, just save it~ and WAHLAH!!! You've got yourself a selective coloring picture, wonderful =)
Try it yourself~!! Maybe there's an easier pro way of doing it.. but this is the only way I know... and also the ONLY photoshop skill I know how to do... heh heh, got any problem, do feel free to ask~~

Picture Styles

Picture Style, one function on Canon Camera's that you've gotta love~!!!

I knew it was on my 50D for quite some time, but never had the time to really get into it, till recently~
Picture Style is a mix of 4 different stuff there, Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation and Color Tone~ and each Picture Style has it's own special effects that you can use depending on the situation so create different moods for the picture, those that came with the camera is...

Standard - Basic stuff, not much changes in it
Portrait - Good for portrait pictures, gives a healthy skin tone feel
Landscape - Sharpens the picture and gives more green in trees, good for landscape taking
Neutral - Subjects are recorded in rich detail, giving the greatest latitude for image processing
Faithful - Accurate recording of the subject’s color, close to the actual image seen with the eye
Monochrome - Black & White, which u can change to different monochrome pictures =)

They are the basic settings, nothing special... till I found out that you could even download more picture styles for it~!!!

Studio Portrait - Same as Portrait setting, but more of a little studio effect
Snapshot Portrait - Good portrait setting when taking casual shots~
Nostalgia - Gives a mysterious dark and amber feel
Clear - My favorite setting!! Gives more dark but detailed feel in the picture!!
Twilight - Gives a magical purple feel in it, good with landscapes
Emerald - Not sure what difference this makes, but they say it's good with ocean photography
Autumn Hues - Brings out the beauty of autumn, too bad we don't have that season...

Yes of course to those who are new to this, it's rather head scratching isn't it?? Well I'll show the difference in what they can do =)
This is the standard setting, the picture might look too over colored, so I used Monochrome Picture Style
Woo =)
Sister and her Husband, it looks good but I want a magical feel to it so I used Twilight~
Notice the face and hair, even the background has a little purple feel to it, magical~
Another shot, but I decided to use Nostalgic to give an olden, gloomy feel to it~
Tada!!
My favorite setting, usually when taking sky pictures the picture wouldn't turn out as nice as expected, so I used Clear setting, perfect for skies and other stuff you would like to be darker~~
FOOOSH!!!
Snapshot Portrait, somehow I find it to be more fun compared to normal Portrait~
Well you've seen a little of what Picture Styles can do~ still learning more about them, but it's such a wonderful and fantastic setting~~ another reason why I love Canon Camera's!!

Chinese New Year pictures are turning out magnificent, I feel so proud of myself~ shall be showing them to you all ASAP ya~!!! XD

新年快乐

Wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year!!

And all asians, REJOICE!!! as your pockets would be filled and become much more heavier~ some would become lighter, but the for the unmarried, rejoice!!! For non-asians... HAHAHAHA!!! XD

Anyways... for those who are traveling back to their hometowns, to be careful in your journey, have a safe trip, and have a blessed and prosperous CNY this year~~

新年快乐

God Bless You all!!! =)

YES School 2009

FINALLY uploaded the pictures from Y.E.S. School, a little late, but thanks to the effort of Rufus pushing me every time to upload it~ so here it is~ I don't have the pictures for every single event cause of classes and all that happened on the same time but... hehe sorry!! Will do better next year!!

Well... here are the pictures =)

YES 2009 Part 1

YES 2009 Part 2

For the video... well that's another challenging part... I'll to upload it if possible... still haven't finished up with HUGE Camp's video too... 0.0

The Power of a Flash

I have never actually been a fan of using flash in photography because of bad experiences with the built in flash on the camera that shoots forward and blinds the person and also makes his face too bright~~ so been always finding ways to counter it by learning about a large aperture, high ISO, just finding ways to counter using a flash, thought of doing some D.I.Y. methods to bounce the build in flash, but was kinda lazy... I guess in the end I was quite the Anti-Flash fella...

But everything changed when I got the set of pictures of Graduation Salute 2008 from Jon Koo~
He uses a Konica Minolta, the last remaining model of it's kind... he got this set for Rm1300... 0.0

But the thing that changed my view about flash is... well flash is actually rather cool~ if you have an external flash that can turn around, so you can make the flash bounce off walls and ceilings... it does improve light, here's the difference from his pictures and mine~~
This was the picture taken with my 300D not using a flash
And here's the difference with a flash... the picture isn't only brighter, it doesn't look TOO bright, and the original colors remain~
Without Flash
With Flash, big differences in image brightness~ which is far better compared to mine =)
Even this, taken from the end of the hall, makes everything else clear, without a flash, it'll just look dark at the back and bright in the front~~ and best, I look good XD

So... yeah, a flash IS awesome, and I am greatly humbled by his pictures, guess I've got something new to learn now, about flash... should get a big flash someday when I save up~ till then... always wanted to try the 2nd Curtain flash function on my 50D, shall try it soon and show you all the results~~
But... yeah I haven't actually blogged about the Graduation Salute before though friends are asking me to blog about it... hmmm... should I??? Though it's an old topic cause it's last year's thingy~ what do you think?? =)

How to add words to your pictures

Had a comment from Lawrence about how I add words to pictures, something like this...

Ahh yes... powerful crazy book of temptations

SO I thought of doing a step-by-step guide in how I do it, and hopefully it'll be of help to others...

Note: I am no pro photoshop fella, still don't know how to even use it so I only find methods in making life easier and more user-friendly~

Why do I add speech bubbles?? I guess it's to make others see what I want the picture to tell, which kinda makes the post a little more interesting, comparing to my posts 4yrs ago which had no speech bubbles there, it felt kinda dull I guess... oh well~~

The program I use is called Corel Paint, which is sort of like the set package that comes with Corel Draw, the functions are a little like Microsoft Paint, but I like to use it cause it just looks and feels cool~~ but the way I'm doing it is so same like Microsoft Paint that you could even do it there too =)When I open it I just choose "NEW" and select the size I want, for a Horizontal Image, I use Width 8 inches and Height 6 inches, but in Pixles.... it's 576 width and 432height~

AND for vertical, 5inches width and 8 inches height~ also known as 360width and 576height in pixles~~

Then appears the blank page~ so I just drop the image I have into it~

And yes you could see the image is too big for the small box~

So I line up the picture to match the box, also known as resizing~~ which also makes the file smaller, easier to upload into blogs

Now the picture size is just as same as the frame~

NOW the fun part, just go select the shape maker tool and make an oval shape...

Then use a paintbrush to draw it, making it into a speech bubble~ of course you're free to choose you're own favorite colors, but I like Black & White

Then the Text Tool, and write the words in the speech bubble, and change the font size to suit you're bubble~ for me I like the font "Complete In Him" go online search bah, there's lots of different fonts~

And erm... yeah you're done~ you could also write something on the picture to copyright it, also known as a watermark~

Of course it's much harder and frustrating when you have to do a few hundred pictures at once, and if you were to do a BATCH thingy on photoshop it would be faster, but why do I do this slow process???

Well the part which I came to like is the file size it becomes, 50+KB and photoshop makes it 400+KB, in which 50KB is SUPER fast when uploading to the internet, especially when blogging with a slow Malaysian speed internet that is faithful in failing you always~

Ahh sigh... hope this post has been helpful to you, if I have not made things clear and have made you blur, do inform me that I may modify it~~

But actually the process is easy... just make a speech bubble and add words =)