Plum Good Eating

Do you know what's really good on a hot summer day? Plums. Do you know what's even better? Plums warmed by the sun but picked in the cool of the evening...at sunset. My Mom went plum crazy; she made Plumonade (Plum-Lemonade), Plum Baby food, Plum sherbet, Prunes and so on...The lighting was just perfect when we picked the plums and these turned out to be plum good pictures too! 

One thing I really kept in mind for these pictures was depth. A shallow depth of field helps to make the fruit more interesting. 

Wildflowers

Editing Your Photos-Part Two-Artistic Effects

Artistic Effects:

(click to enlarge photos)

Paint Daubs:

This is one way to turn your photograph into a "painting" by making little "Daubs" or "Blobs" of color rather than clear, sharp edges.

Before:

After:

Sponge:

Similar to watercolor in it's "watery" appearance but has a different texture. Sponge is more "grainy" than watercolor-like a sponge.

Before:

Rough Pastels:

Pastels are similar to crayons (only more professional :) and will create a more "gritty" and "streaky" look to your photograph as it has done here.

Palette Knife:

Notice the "blobs", much like in a painting.

Before:

After:

Dry Brush:

Notice the smoothed and more blended colors in this photograph.

Before:

After:

Charcoal:

Before:

After:

Colored Pencils:

Before:

After:

Watercolor:

Watercolor darkens the colors in your photos and make it look more "watery"
like a watercolor painting.

Before:

After:

Before:


After:

Before:

After:

Emboss:

Before:

After:

Soft Focus:
(I used Gaussian Blur & a little B&W to dim the overexposed areas)

Before:

After:

Have Fun!

Editing Your Photos-Part One

Editing your photos can be much more than simply cropping, rotating, and taking the red-eye out of your photos. Though those things are helpful-and necessary skills for a photographer-there is much more to editing your photos than that.

If you are a creative person (like me :) this can be an avenue to express your creativity further.

There are endless effects, and combinations of effects you can apply to your photos, 'the sky's the limit' so be creative!

I'll start out with some basic stuff (layers and colors) and then show you some photos with more 'artistic' effects and creativity involved.

Note: All of the effects I used in the following photos came from the effects toolbar as pictured above.

Layering:
Layering is a very important technique and can be a great deal of fun to play around with. You can adjust the opacity of the photos to create a variety of professional looking photographs. Here are a few simple ones I have done to illustrate:

Color (or lack thereof):


Black and White:


Sephia/Old Paper:

(also Palette Knife on last picture)

Artistic Effects:

Charcoal:

Colored Pencils:


Emboss:


Soft Focus (I used Gaussian Blur):

In my next post I'll go more in-depth into Artistic Effects with Before and After shots.