It's Friday! – Wonder Girl

It’s Fix-It Friday over at iheartfaces.com. I love this challenge. It’s so appeals to the geek/artist in me. Taking a photo and playing with it all day is a sick addiction. I don’t know why I do it. It’s a good thing I have this blog or else I’ll be doing it alone, in the dark, where no one can see. Thanks to the ladies over at iHeart Faces, my addiction is bared to the world.

The Wonder Girl After

The Wonder Girl Before.

Here goes…

TRA2 – Pool Party (one of my favorite actions)
Ctrl M – lightened the photo (quite a lot)
PW’s – Define and Sharpen
TRA2 – Smooth-O-Matic
Ctrl J – to duplicate the layer just in case I messed up the next step, which I did.
PS2 – Clone tool (got rid of the little blemish on her forehead)
Lowered opacity to 72% to blend in the cloned area a little more. Good thing I duplicated the layer!
Flattened the image.
Took a soft brush and lightened under her left eye. It took me a couple of tries to get the right brush and hardness.
Then I played with hue/saturation and decided I just needed to stop.
I selectively cropped. Et Voila!

Find TRA2 here.
Find PW here (although I’m sure everyone who got this far in the post knows that.)

Now I’m going to critique my own photo. I do believe it’s too soft and needs to be defined a little more. But then I could be here all day! The resolution is slightly off because I had to re-size for the blog. But frankly, I’m not sure how to fix that so there you go. Too much fun to be had and not enough time.

Go find out what all the fuss is about over at iheartfaces.com.

Before And After – The Bird

My parents bought me the action set from Totally Rad. They said they weren’t sure what they were buying me, but it was a really nice gift. I use it all the time.

Post-processing can mean the difference between a good picture and a wow picture.

When we are on vacation, we cannot help but act like tourists at times. So while boating in Florida last month, we decided to throw some food out to the birds. Locals don’t do this, only tourists like us do.

This gave me the wonderful opportunity to try to capture birds. This little birdie flew right into my camera view. This picture is straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC). He had one leg and was perfectly outlined again the blue sky. I didn’t even need to crop the picture, he aligned himself perfectly.

As good as I think this happenstance is (I didn’t plan it at all), I thought I could use some pizazz.

I used the “Punch Out!!!” action on the TRA2 set. It turned the blue sky even more blue. Love it.

Look at the difference side by side. Don’t forget!! you need to flatten the image (Layer>Flatten Image) before you go on…

I ran the “Punch Out!!!” action again but I started losing the details of the features, so I lowered the opacity of the layer to about 50%. (Flatten please).

Then I ran the “Burnt Edge” action. This action is pretty strong, remember you can always lower the opacity. But I left it at 100% because I thought the blue sky can handle it.

There you go…I love this bird.

It's Friday! – Baby Boy Blue

I love Fridays! I love it more now that I have my work done (sort of). Now I’m going to play!

I’m lurking constantly over at iheartfaces.com now. It’s a wonderful resource and a great way to improve you photography AND you should see what others are doing over there. Fridays are play day and I’m possessed with the photography bug. Possessed (too many s’?) I say! I’m glad to know I’m not alone…

Today’s assignment is this cute little boy. When I first saw the picture I thought…

1) black and white
2) soft, soft, soft
3) melancholy and tired. Makes me want to rock him and sing him to sleep.

So here goes,

Black and white.

I’m using Photoshop in CS2. I ran B’s Vanilla B&W II on it. Then I ran Glam Blur on it, using all default setting because I’m lazy. I downloaded both of them a long time ago and I can’t find the link for it. I will try to find it again and update this post. Shoot. Anyway I then ran PW’s Bring On The Eyes and lowered the opacity to 50%. I selectively cropped and am done!

The before and after. Or rather, after and before. Just like me to get it backward.

Now some color and some softness, because I can’t stop!

Soft, soft, soft.

I ran TRA2, Pool Party action, flatten. I then ran Smooth-O-Matic, same action set. Flatten. Then PW’s Bring On The eyes, lower to 50% opacity. Flatten.

Unlike the beautiful red-head from last week, I thought this photo just needed a light touch. I wanted to leave the furrowed brow. It’s adorable.

Sometimes running too many actions will make you dependent on the actions and take away the inclination to learn Photoshop. But the actions themselves are the tool so why not? Besides, I literally can be here all day otherwise, and love every minute of it. But I do have to pick up the boy from school now. I remember when he was this little…really breaks my heart.

Before And After – Blue Ice

This little piece of ice has had my attention for a long time. I spent a couple of hours playing with the original image in order to make it look like this.

Here’s what it looked like before…this is the SOOC. It’s pretty but has no umph. I placed my camera on the icy ground to capture this small, innocuous piece of frozen H2O because I saw its potential.

I opened it up in Photoshop and I ran TRA2’s “Punch Out!!!” action on it.

It was getting there…but not quite enough of a punch for me. So I ran it again.

Now it’s getting there…now it’s looking cold. I was running out of time, so I ran PW’s “Sharpen and Define” action on it. When you are shooting ice, it should be as sharp as possible so you can get all the details that God puts there.

There it is, I then posted it, and called it a day.

But…I couldn’t help myself and revisited it again…during the second half of the Super Bowl.

I opened it up in Photoshop Elements just to see what would happen…just because.

I increased the contrast because you can’t have enough contrast with ice…it’s supposed to be cold.

Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast…It will open the above window. I just increased the brightness and contrast until it looked good to me. Every picture is different so use your eye.

Now I thought a little bit more color might help so Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Color Curves…That will open the window above.

I adjusted what looks like little volume control buttons to me. When I move the buttons left and right, it moves the point on the graph up or down. I made a little gentle S-curve until it satisfied my eye. You’ll see the picture deepen with color.

So there you go…it’s one way I amuse myself…

Before…

After…very cool, or rather very cold…

PSE Tip – Creative Kaitlin And Quick Edge Burn

Kaitlin is my good friend Lisa’s little girl. She’s also – like – this really creative chick. She is going to be a famous and successful artist, I have absolutely no doubt. She represents to me a promise of what could have been. I wish I studied something artistic in school, instead, I decided to get a degree in physics. Yes, physics. In any case, the blue hair is cool too.

I am working on a project for a friend and was creatively stuck…so while I was at my hometown last month and visiting Kaitlin’s mom and dad, I asked her to make me a header for my project. I saw her passion and her talent and I just knew…it was going to be WAAAAY better than what I could do. This is what she gave me, awesome. I changed it a little bit, to better represent what the project is about. Kaitlin knows this, I told her. Trust me, the original is great.

Kaitlin, in the “real” world when you are not working for yourself, your vision sometimes has to be amended for a client or boss. I hope you’ll like what I did to your original. I’ll show you at the end of this post.

I’m going to take Kaitlin and change her a little too, give her a little bit of a burn around the edges. I had to dissect some actions to figure out how…and it’s not the simpliest thing to do in PSE but it can really make put a punch in a photo.

First choose the rectangular marquee tool and select a portion of the photograph about an inch from the sides of the edges.

Notice that I hit control J to make a duplicate layer…just to keep the original image in case I mess up.

I then right click on the photo and that little box shows up. I didn’t zoom in again! A real graphic artist would have, I’m just a physics major. Anyway, choose “Select Inverse”. You’ll see that the outside of the image becomes selected.

Right click on the image again and select “Layer Via Copy”. You see another layer pop up with just the selected outer edge.

Under the layer drop down box, choose “Linear Burn”. I zoomed in! The angels are singing.

You’ll see the outer edge of your image turn darker. It’s kind of cool.

Now go to Filter>Distort>Spherize.

It will put the oval over the image. Don’t panic, it just looks funny, it’s ok.

Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur.

Move the radius all the way to the right to 250.0 pixels.

There’s Kaitlin with an edge burn on her. It just sets off her blue hair so well.

You know Kaitlin, when your mom and I were in high school, I used to worry about your mom’s taste in music. When we were all listening to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, she was listening to Metallica or some other really hard rock band. But now, I’m the abnormal one and she’s the one saving lives every day as a nurse. I love your parents…I know you will make them proud.

And here’s what I did to your original piece of art. As you can see, it still is representative of your original. It’s a little blurry because I had the resolution wrong when I shrunk it for the web. Like I said, a real graphic artist would have done it correctly. I hope you approve.

Here’s a Kaitlin-girl original. This piece has won her acclaim and she is advancing to the Northeastern Pennsylvania Scholastic Competition. She’s won the right to take it to the national level as well. Way to go Kaitlin-girl! Make your momma proud.