okay, here we go with the exam. the premise is that we have 24 images from which we can choose to combine or create amended images...that's it, no going out and picking any of our own.

we also can use no third party filters, software, tubes or anything outside of the original psp7.02 program for our combined or changed images.

if you would like to see what we started with, click here to open a new window and peek. BUT, if you are thinking of taking this class and think you can get a jump on the exam for next term with these images, forget it!  first, who says our ever crafty taskmaster/mistress will use these images or this exam, and second, these are only teeny thumbnails of horrid, over compressed quality....ha ha.

oh, and we also had to correct at least one of the photos and display the before & after histograms.

this looks like a nice misty morning, but if it's supposed to be a bright sunny day, it's a bit faded. note the gap at the left/dark end of the histogram.

also, i was seeing a fair amount of grainyness in the original psp file...especially in the sky and clouds.

in looking at the size reduction on this histogram, i'm not sure that you can see that the gap on the left/dark side has been removed...but it has. *smile*

tools used to adjust this photo were:  histogram adjustment, edge preserving smoother, auto color balance, auto contrast, auto saturation, fade correction and clarify.

also, when the image was brightened & darkened, the dark trees in the background lost all of their detail. i selected them with the magic wand, feathered the selection, then sharpened and slightly lightened them with brightness/contrast adjustment.  that seemed to bring a bit back, but i had to stop brightening, etc. as they started to look washed out above the settings i used.

please note that both histogram screen shots were made prior to resizing the images. also, both were compressed at 25 for webpage display.

*** may have gotten a bit tooooo bright here...ha ha ***

okay, here's the image that i almost trashed because i like what some other classmates did with the wall street image oh so much. BUT, i still kinda like the funny eye, so it stayed.

the table is the top layer. the bear layer under it was moved to reach it's current position. grassy backgroud was cloned to cover that upper left section of the layer so it would give the mottled effect here.

i experimented with several blend modes and somehow forgot to make note of which one i used before merging the layers (sorry). layers were merged. auto color balance and auto saturation applied.  brightness and contrast were adjusted with an adjustment layer. manual color correction was used in the mode of beverage/black coffee. text added in a new layer and layers merged. 

finally, the image was resized and unsharp mask applied. it was then sliced to preserve the text in gif format and the image in jpg.