I got to see three different artists who inspired me. Beautiful day in DC. Even in the midst of the chaos, hustle and bustle of New York City, Osgemeos murals on 14th street inspired me and opened my mind to creativity as I walked over from 14th street on the 2 over to 14th street on the L train to Brooklyn. On the many days I walked by, I found myself running late for work at a job that both inspired and deflated me. It was also around this time Basquiat's family did an instillation in honor of their son, brother, lover, friend. The exhibit was personal and invigorating. Seeing Banksy really channel the heart of the message we see in Basquiat's "Boy with his dog" which highlights the humanity of black youth, although often policed and matured by force, both of which we see in Banksy's reinterpretation. The loss of innocence black children face in America and abroad due to white supremacist ideology is astounding but can never strip us of our humanity.
How to edit out the junk in your vacation/ expat tour photos.
Well hello again, my friend! Are you planning your next vacation? Looking to escape the hustle and bustle of dystopian American society? Do you and your suburban capitalist family want to detach from the world by visiting a foreign country's White Lotus resort that is also affected by your capitalist gain? PERFECT! Today I'll be showing you how to edit and perfect your photos to remove blemishes, print marks, and even those pesky tourists who stand in the way of your vacation glam shot! Starting with this old photo below.
Our first step is going to be opening our image in Photoshop and evaluating our image. What issues can you notice with this image? I noticed the photo must've been placed on a scanner and it's sitting a little crooked, like J. Cole's smile. I see the kid on the right (for all intents and purposes, we'll assume this kid isn't a member of the family and NEEDS to be removed immediately) who was on the bridge next to this blonde family. I also notice we have a little print mark in the photo in the center left.
We're gonna remove those pesky imperfections and to start we'll set up our rulers so the photo can be edited correctly. To do this you can double-click on the rulers in the photo, as this will open preferences where we'll set up our rulers to be by inches and not pixels.
Our first correction will be straightening the photo, because if I've learned anything from Migos it's that there's nothing wrong with a little straightening. On Photoshop, we have a tool that can straighten out anything. Select that tool and draw a line from the top left corner of our photo and you'll see it lines the photo up as to remove any crookedness. If my mama had this tool growing up my whole life would've been different. We'll crop out the border of the photo and focus only on the photo itself, like seen below.
Next thing we'll do is brighten up our photo and refresh the colors. To do this, we'll open up the Adjustments panel and scroll to Single Adjustments, click on Curves. Select the White Point tool on the left side of the Properties panel. When we select the brightest spot on the photo, this will brighten up the picture so you're going to click on the white strip of the girl's dress.
These are just touch ups that can be the difference between showing people your actual age by noticing age in the photo. We'll add a few more adjustments to light levels in the photo. Under Single Adjustments we'll click on Levels, which sits under Curves. We'll see a grid of levels and three triangular selection tools. Grab the triangle (black point) on the left to 15, the one in the middle (midtones) and we'll adjust the value to .90. Once we've finished adjustments we can click on Layers and flatten our image. Next up, we'll doing the most exciting part, removing smudges, imperfections, and most exhileratingly other people from your photo!
To start fixing mistakes and blemishes from our photo, we'll select our Spot Healing Brush tool, which will help us remove any spotty pieces of our photo. There's other retouching tools in the group with this tool which you can find by right clicking on the tool, we'll specifically be using the Remove tool. We'll be removing the smudges and photo print lines like above. To remove people from your photo, you'll drag your mouse over the kid and his shadow. like below!
FINALLY, to touch up the area after his timely removal, we'll use Generative Fill to make the CHOP look natural. like below.
And just like that, you've edited and perfected your vacay photos!
Getting Started with PhotoShop way later than you should have, but we're here.
It's 2025. We're on the verge of collapse in many industries across America, but one booming industry is digital art. From memes to album covers to harshly over-editing your photos to make an unreal perfect version of yourself, it's all possible and fabulous.
This post will be your guide to beginning in Photoshop, even though, like me, you shoulda BEEN used it, chile.
STARTING NOW!
We'll go over how to begin creating projects on the Adobe Photoshop app by learning to create a thumbnail video for a YouTube video. Once you pay for the app (or use your grandma's email for a free trial for the 500th time) you can start the app, which opens up to our Home Screen.
The Home Screen offers multiple ways to get started on the left side of the screen. You can click on the "Ps" logo on the top left to open Photoshop workspace where you can start working. Otherwise, there are options for opening projects you've been working on as well as ones shared with you and even projects you deleted due to shame and embarrassment. The Home option serves information about new features and offers ways to get started with images that are local to your device (whatever you have on your computer or phone GRAMPS). The Learn option will give you tutorials on how to get started for my visual learner girlies.
Click on New File to start a new document, once on the creation screen you'll see that you have a myriad of options for what you can do. You'll see templates and different types of files you can start making as well as the size and resolution of your project.
We're gonna do this together, bestie! Click on Film & Video in the options for templates and click "Create". Once open, you're going to drop an image by clicking and dragging the photo you'd like to do and placing it on the blank screen. Once you drop your image in, you'll see bars on the image with squares at the end and if you reposition the squares you'll be able to resize and stretch your image. Once you have stretched the image to cover and empty canvas space, click on the check mark in the options bar to drop that there photo. Once you drop that photo in, we'll add another layer to the layer panel by clicking the box with the + inside it. Adding this new layer is like adding a clear sheet of paper on top of what's already on the campus.
On our second layer you can use the rectangular selection tool and select different blocks on top of your loaded image to fill with color in the options menu to the right. Once you've added the colors, you can set auto-blend layer options to have the rectangles you've color filled can fill the colors on the image in layer 1.
