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Hello All! The last two days have been so chilly here in Arizona. I have broken out the thick sweater and (my favorite) the scarves! The chill from outside makes me just want to curl up on the couch with the boyfriend and a nice cup of coffee. To that end I would like to share with you all a blog dedicated to beautiful cups of coffee!  http://artinmycoffee.com/ Click on the image to take a look.

Below are some of my favorite images by Swiss modernist graphic designer Hans Neuburg.   This particular style really appeals to me due to the minimal and clean compositions.  When he used color it was subtle yet very in your face at the same time without detracting from the overall design.  One of my design heroes for sure.  Images courtesy of AisleOne‘s Flickr Gallery

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Hello all! I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but from now on I will be better about the updates. I figure you all might like to know some things about the blogger, so I’ve decide to tell you all a little about myself in the form of a list of my favorite things. So here are my top 10:

1. A really good cup of coffee. It’s my number one favorite thing. I want it in the morning, before a big presentation, with friends, and when I am happy and when I am sad
2. Fashion. I love perusing fashion magazines, blogs, people watching and window shopping for inspiration.
3. Witty intellectual conversation and debates. I think that stems from being a political science major
4. Weekend mornings (or afternoons as the case may be). I love waking up alarm free and cuddled up with that someone special
5. Thrillers and action packed movies
6. Art particularly on postcards. I have a wall in my apartment covered from top to bottom in postcards
7. Adventure. I enjoy exploring new places, ideas, and meeting new people
8. Snow. I wait all winter for the flakes to fall and have been sorely disappointed since moving to Phoenix.
9. Playing Apples to Apples and Taboo. Game nights, particularly with those games, always end in tons of fun and laughter
10. Shopping. I love the challenge of finding the perfect thing, whatever that may be.

Thanks for reading my list! What are some of your favorite things?

In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to use adjustment layers in Photoshop in order to color correct and further develop your photograph.  This method will allow you to fine tune and tweak your image better than using the image > adjustments > auto contrast/color/levels.  For this tutorial I am working with a 300 DPI file at 3008 * 2000 pixels.  Scanned images from film or other media are fine as long as you can retain the resolution.

Step 1: Create your adjustment layers.

Adding Adjustment Layers. Click for Bigger.

Begin by opening your file and unlocking the layer by double clicking it.  Head over to the layers palette, create a new adjustment layer,  (half circles)  and create two curve layers, and a hue/saturation layer.  Double-click on the text “Curves 1″ and name it color adjustments.  For “Curves 2″, rename it to contrast.  Click where it says “normal” in the layers palette and select “luminosity” from the dropdown.

Step 2:  Add Contrast with the “contrast” layer.

Lets add some contrast to this photo! Double click the half circle for the “contrast” layer to bring up the curve dialog box.  Basically you are going to add shadows, highlights and adjust the midtones until you are satisfied with the end result.  Click on the diagonal line towards the bottom, and drag it down slightly to the right to create a rich black.  Now click on the line towards the top right and drag it up to the left slightly to add powerful highlights.  Add mid tones by selecting the middle of the diagonal line and bring it slightly to the left. The rest is up to you.  You can tweak this line as much or as little as you like.  When you are happy with the result click ok to set the changes.  *TIP* If you have already “set” the adjustments you can click on it again to add additional adjustments.  If you are unhappy with the new changes, just click cancel and it will revert to your previous adjustments!

Step 3: Adjust the color balance.

Double click the "background" layer to unlock the image

This photo needs some color balance! Double click on the “color adjustment” layer to bring up the curve dialog box.  This is very similar to how you adjusted the contrast, except we will be going into specific color channels.  Typically you will want to create a white balance for your image, but by all means, feel free to experiment.  For this example image, click the drop down called “channel”, and select red.  Click the diagonal line in the middle and bring that up just slightly.  The green channel is alright, so we will skip to blue.  It’s very close to being fully white balanced, just bring the diagonal line slightly down.

Step 4: Hue/Saturation fun.

We’re in the home stretch of the edit now.  Double-click the hue/saturation layer and bring that dialog box up.  This is all a matter of personal preference here.  You could desaturate the full image to make it a black and white image.  Increasing saturation subtly by +10 or so will make the image pop, but could look wonky when printed.  This part is all up to you.  Play with the sliders and have fun.

Step 5: Yay an edited Photo!

Before we head out to the rest of the known world, Sarah and I decided that we’d check out all that Arizona has to offer.  First off, I’m assuming you’ve been to Arizona before.  (If you haven’t, head straight for the Grand Canyon and Sedona for some breathtaking views of the natural world.)

We made our way from Tempe with the goal of attaining some delicious biscuits and gravy at Mike and Rhonda’s Place, a 24 hour diner in Flagstaff.  We hopped into Sarah’s car and took off for the I-17N which thankfully had minimal construction.  After about a 45 minute drive, we stopped in a little town called McGuireVille which has a fantastic restaurant called “restaurant”.

In the middle of this town is one of my favorite natural wonders that exists in Arizona, aside from the Grand Canyon, Montezuma’s Well.  This isn’t some tiny well in the middle of the town… It’s a huge crater with ruins from the Sinigua tribe built into the cliff face.  It’s quite incredible to see.  The Sinigua tribe built up a complex of irrigation canals for agricultural purposes to the right of this well, which I highly recommend you make the trek down to.  It’s quite peaceful down in the canals and incredibly beautiful in the fall.  Very, very green.  We made the trek back up the side of the well and back into our car back on the quest for biscuits and gravy.

About 40 miles outside of Flagstaff, we decided to make a short detour in Sedona for a scenic route and to check out Tlacquepaque, a cool little shopping center styled after a mercado in Guadalajara, Mexico.  It was cool architecturally, but in my opinion the art inside is very kitschy, expensive stuff.  Why yes I would like a buddha statue for $40,000! Oh cool free shipping?  We did end up buying something but it was to tide us over until we found delicious biscuits and gravy.  That something we bought? Kinder eggs from Germany!  They are small little milk chocolate eggs which contain a cool little toy inside that you assemble.  We crossed the road, illegally, which ended up being a highway to get to a UFO shop.  The place was decked out with “greys”, the little aliens with the enormous eyes, as well as a replica of the mercury spacecraft from humanities early adventures into space.  Unfortunately the store had closed early for the day so we never got to experience the joys of aliens…

We ended up back in the car zooming down the highway on our way to our goal of Flagstaff.  We arrived after what seemed like quite a distance (it was only 40 miles from Sedona), and headed for Mike and Rhonda’s in search of biscuits and gravy.  We pulled up to it and… it was closed.  We couldn’t believe it.  A 24 hour diner that we came all the way from Tempe for was closed!  At this point we were starving and settled for a place called Alpine Pizza, “Flagstaff’s oldest pizzeria” and enjoyed a pepperoni pizza and some breadsticks.  We didn’t find biscuits and gravy, but we did end up having a lot of fun on our day trip.