Random

Revoltech Danboard from Amazon.co.jp

I present to you my new "toy"!!

DANBOARD aka Danbo.

Some facts about it:
1. Bought it from ebay
2. It can only be bought at Amazon.co.jp which is from Japan
3. It's Japanese
4. It's kinda plasticky cheap
5. It's smaller than my hand
6. It's a box figure from Revoltech








Aint he cute? :p

More about it next time.

Creating your own Passport Photo

The other day, my friend came up to me asking me to take her a picture for her passport photo. At first, I hesitated because I had limited knowledge and tools of doing such a thing. Then, I decided to take up as a challenge because I wanted to try something new. And after everything was done, it turned out good apart from the minor flaws because of my limited knowledge.

Here's my humble tutorial.


What you need?
1 x Camera
1 x External Flash (optional) - to properly strobe on the subject face
1 x Adobe Photoshop Editing


STEPS
1. Take a picture of your SUBJECT


- The main objective here is to take a picture of your subject.
COMPOSURE:
- First, compose your subject. Either move them around or simply ask them to pose. But, it was my first time, my subject "naturally" posed for me - which was good.
- You may want to take a whole body with the entire background. This is because it gives you option to edit the photos later on a PC.
LIGHTINGS:
- Second, what I learned that day was that you have to carefully light up your subject carefully (i.e. the face, body, shoulder and also the background).
- Either having more lights above, below and beside your subject will help to bring out the subject's feature A LOT.
- However, as you can see from the picture above, it's not really that "CLEAN" because you still see shadow under the chin.
- Oh yea, the background is important as well. Try not to have too much shadow behind on the background. Because we want to remove the background later.

2. Have fun Photoshop!

- There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube teaching you how to use photoshop. Keywords: "REMOVE BACKGROUND", "GRADIENT TINT" AND "LAYER MASKING".
- That were the three methods I used.
- First, CROP the picture. (Half Body, Full Body, or whatever you like).
- Second, REMOVE the background by using the LASSO tool to SELECT then DELETE.
- Third, ADD another LAYER. Then GRADIENT TOOL it with one of the BLUE COLOUR that is similar to a passport photo background.
- Forth, minor touchup, such as AUTO CONTRAST and COLOUR and you are done.

Few Tips:
1. Keep practicing your photoshop skills.
2. There are a lot of tutorials online (i.e. Youtube).


Anyway, your comments and criticism are greatly appreciated as I'm still learning to improve on my Photoshop skill. Cheers.

Melbourne Weather Forecast: HOT and DRY.

Title: Melbourne's Weather Forecast
Date: November 7th 2009
Subject: Hot and Dry Weather




Source: MELBOURNE.COM.AU
URL: http://www.weather.com.au/vic/melbourne