Tutorial Reviews for Week 7

1) “Soft Focus Wedding Photograph Effect!” Tutorial
http://www.tutvid.com/tutorials/photoshop/tutorials/softFocusWeddingEffect.php
This tutorial was fast and simple. The narrator got to his finished product by using a couple tools and simple steps. He was using some tools that I have never used before and used a tool I have not heard of. I did not know about the feather selection tool until this tutorial. Some of the tools he used to create his image were filter blur, radial blur, fill layer, and adjustments layers.

First, he selects where he wants focus to remain and applies a blur to everything else.
Next he chooses the fill layer color.
Lastly, after color adjustments and applying more blurs he has a beautiful intimate picture.
The picture I selected to use for this tutorial isn't romantic like the picture he used...but I do think this picture is kind of funny because of the country puppets we are sitting with....
Our (josh and my) faces are in focus...pretty neat...I think this picture kind of has a westerny feel now...:)

2) “How to Turn Humdrum Photos into Cinematic Portraits” Tutorial
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-turn-humdrum-photos-into-cinematic-portraits/
This tutorial shows you how to turn a regular photo into a dramatic “cinematic portrait”. This tutorial supplies the links to where you can get the images he used to create his final portrait so you can follow along using the same images if you want to. This tutorial is interesting because it has the steps listed in text as well as a video. I personally thought the narrator to the video tutorial version was a little funny and could possibly have an English accent.

3) “Enhance Your Image with Selective Color Adjustment” Tutorial
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/enhance-your-image-with-selective-color-adjustments/
In this tutorial you learn how to separate a foreground object from the background onto different layers so it is easier to adjust them. This tutorial uses an extract filter, masks, selective color adjustment layers, and the gradient tool to turn a washed out beach photo into a vibrant beach photo. This tutorial is thirteen steps but the content in each step includes quite a bit of information and tasks.


4) “Souping up a Photo” Tutorial
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/souping-up-a-photo/
This tutorial changes the color palette and creates a greater contrast to give a photo more “punch”. I found steps three and four to be very interesting because they applied a technique I was unaware of using. In steps three and four, the duplicated image layer was set to black and white and then applied as a transparent overlay to the original image to sharpen the image. The tutorial also shows you how to get rid of unwanted noise, de-saturate the image, and apply color and texture by using another image.

5) “How to Use Depth of Field to Create Portraits with Blown-Out Backgrounds” Tutorial
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-use-depth-of-field-to-create-portraits-with-blown-out-backgrounds/
This tutorial is very interesting because the fist six steps of the eleven step tutorial is about photography. The author of this tutorial explains what aperture is and how to adjust the camera to take a portrait. She also shares some photo taking tips like distance between your subject and the background and how people in your portrait should be at the same distance from your camera. In steps seven through eleven she teaches you how to enhance a background blur in Photoshop.