Having grown up in a small-ish coastal New England town, big Hollywood-type events still leave me in a bit of shock and awe.  I had no idea what to expect from my new Seat Filling obligations.  Would I end up seat-less, standing in the back of a dark theater or worse, in some holding room waiting for a bladder engorged teeny bopper to pee so I could catch 30 second glimpses of the show?  I was overcome with scenerios of the situation to which I was entering. It was exciting.

Before the show, we were placed in the first 5 rows. As ticket holders arrived, we were moved around, each time to a new empty seat.  It was like playing the lottery. Would your seat holder arrive or would you end up with one of the best seats in the house?  I was moved about 5 times before settling about 15 rows back from the stage in an aisle seat next to what I believe was some actress who has been on TV. She looked so familiar.  Anyway, it was a solo seat so I prayed it’s occupant got held up at the office and couldn’t make it to the show. As luck would have it, the occupant of Seat 110, Row AA never made it to the Idol finale. I got to see the whole show from 15 rows away.  Never in a million years would have imagined myself in that position, in that very moment/ It was surreal. And thanks to FOX for putting on a truly fantastic show. Fireworks? KISS?  Free giveaways to the audience?  It was awesome.

Now I will leave you with the Photograph-of-the-Day: Sedona Vortex.  This is a little fun photoshop project I worked on from an original photo taken of me in Sedona, AZ.  I experimented with different filters, brushes and filter styles.  I hope you like it.

This is the original:

So you wanna make a comic-book style photo, do ya?  Well I have a quick and easy tutorial that will show you just how to do that.  Pretty soon you’ll be on your way to making all your photos into super fly looking comic book scenes that all your friends will be mad jealous of because your photoshoppin’ skillz are awesome with a capital A. So what are you waiting for?  Grab that killer photo, grease up your photoshop CS3 and let’s get this show on the road.

Let’s Get Comicky!!

Pick a photo that has pretty balanced lighting. I have chosen a photograph of my adorably goofy looking dog, Caesar.

Always make sure you duplicate the background layer as a separate copy so that you can save the integrity of the original photo.

Next, I like to crop out the background and fill in the space later with black to add to the comic book effect of it. If you want to do this, it’s easy with the quick selection tool located on the tool palette.

Now we are going to increase the overall contrast of the picture by burning it a bit. Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS.  With this image we are going to set the INPUT LEVELS to 5 / 1.00 / 230. But this is only for this example. Feel free to play around with the settings to best fit the needs of your photo.

Next, we are going to give the photo an illustrated look with a grainy appearance to give the illusion of old quality paper. It is not a realistic effect, it is just some distortion to the image to help us achieve the final look. Go to FILTERS > ARTISTIC > FILM GRAIN. In this case we are going to use: GRAIN: 5, HIGHLIGHT AREA: 0, INTENSITY: 10. I cannot say this enough, but I’ll keep saying it anyway because repition IS the mother of skill. TRY DIFFERENT SETTINGS FOR DIFFERENT PHOTOS!

Right click on your newly film-grained background layer and click, DUPLICATE LAYER.  Once you have duplicated the new layer, name it HALFTONE.

In this step we are going apply a halftone pattern to the image to give the final old comic book printing effect. Go to FILTER > PIXELATE > COLOR HALFTONE. Set MAX RADIUS: 6 and leave the rest with the default values (don’t forget, you can still experiment with the radius size). Press OK and then go to the LAYERS PALETTE and set the BLENDING MODE to DARKEN.

Now, for the fun part!  Adding comic book elements to the picture

The effect looks nice so far. It is not a realistic old comic book effect, it simple resembles that look. To make it more real, now comes the fun part. We are going to add some unique elements that are very popular on comic books and strips.  First, I’m going to fill in the background layer with black using the background fill tool.

Then, in the layers palette, I’m going to highlight “Background copy” and “HALFTONE” layers, right click, then hit “DUPLICATE LAYERS”.  Click Ok, leaving everything as it, right click again on the highlighted copies and click merge layers.  I then rename my new merged copy as HALFTONE MERGED and I hide the rest of the layers.

Then I’m going to resize that layer, by hitting Ctrl+ T (Free Transform Tool, also found under EDIT>FREE TRANSFORM.  I’m going to hold down SHIFT while resizing the layer to leave a small border around the outside, and center the image so the border is equal around all sides.

Then I simply add a black square layer behind my my HALFTONE MERGED layer to create a thin (or thick) black border, depending on your preference.

Add a new layer and draw a small rectangle at the bottom left of the frame of the image. Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it orange. An orange to yellow gradient looks better but you can use any color you want.  If you wish, you can draw another rectangle, a bit larger this time, in the upper corner of the frame. Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it white. I prefer one box, but it depends on the size and shape of your overall image.

Don’t forget to add your witty caption!  To add captions to the photo you can use any font you like, but if you use a font designed specifically for comic books, your image will look that so much cooler, and you want to be cool, don’t you? At the end of this article you’ll find more great comic book fonts you can use.  I chose a simple art-deco type font but have fun with it and play around with different font styles.   Here are some great open-source fonts you can also use from dafont.com.

Here’s the final result:

Some great additional font resources.  And if you are a lover of comics, visit Happy Blogtime for all your comic needs.

FREE FONTS: Blambot	FREE SOUND FX CLIPART: Blambot	FREE COMIC BOOK BALLOONS: Blambot
FONTS: ComicBookFonts	TIPS AND TUTORIALS: Balloon Tales	FONT: Monster Mash
FONT: Zoom	FONT: Braaains	FONT: Goosebumps

Meet Little Caesar. Caesar likes to run, jump, bark and eat milk bones like it’s his job. He is a very energetic little puppy who, after a solid four times around the block pulling me on my rollarblades, enjoys passing out on the couch with his tongue hanging low like a continental soldier. He has a good life.

The effects for this photograph were added using a wonderful web service that adds  cool camera effect to your picture on the fly. It’s called TiltShiftGenerator, and in order to use it, you must Adobe AIR installed on your computer.  You can find the Adobe AIR download on the TiltShiftGenerator website.

One does not except to find such spiritual and religious symbology when in Las Vegas, so you can imagine I was in awe when I looked out of my hotel window and saw this cross lit up by the setting desert sun.   I grabbed my digital rebel xti and snapped away.  I love situations like this where the lighting is so dramatic and I can experiment with my camera by playing with aperture, ISO, f-stop, black and white, color and so many other great settings that come with a digital SLR.  The image above was the image I finally settled on and I simply added a soft vignette fade to embrace the dramatic nature of the scene.  To me, this photo speaks volumes of the irony of being in a city that thrives on materialism when there is so much simplistic beauty all around. I love how life throws you those amazing little reminders when you least expect it. It was a great trip and of course, Las Vegas is always a photographer’s playground so I had a great time.  Stay tuned for more from the Vegas chapter, coming soon.