The Wonderful World of Photoshop

This is the SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) picture, which I think is a rather nice shot, but I wanted to see if I can get a little more *WOW* out of it in Photo-shop.

I thought a little soft focus (Gaussian Blur) would make a more dreamy setting, I also found the excessive reflections in the eyes to be a little distracting. If you look closely in the left eye (your left, not his) you will see my camera lens (the large circular blob), a sliver of my head sticking out above it, my elbows stuck out like I'm doing the chicken dance, Calvin's play gym (the long arcs around the pupil), the blue sky behind that, and oh look, I can even see some clouds. This is what I would call, too much detail. So, I took the paintbrush, set it to black, dissolve, and an opacity less than 50% and brushed over certain areas; eliminating the "excessive" detail, but still leaving enough to incite interest.

While I was at it, I also enhanced the colors by minor tweaks here and there.

Now, I truly love this rendering but I also wanted to see what else I could do with it. So, I tried Black & White (84%).

Now, what about a full Black & White make-over?

Breath-taking...but what about Sephia? (less than 50 %)

What about a little more? (84%)

Oooh...love that vintage look.

Now what if...instead of softening the eyes I sharpen them using a tip I learned off The Pioneer Woman?

Interesting...which one is your favorite?

Stepping Back in Time

I LOVE old photos.

Remember this photo from last week? I have already turned it black and white and have added a soft focus, now I'm going to add a more vintage feel to it.

Open the photo in photoshop and in the layers panel select "create new adjustment layer" this should open a drop-down window where you can select "hue/saturation". Now another window will pop up, in the bottom right panel there is a little check-box labeled "colorize", check the box then slide the "saturation" bar to the intensity of your choice. In the photo below I chose 35.

Now Compare:

It's like sepia, only you decide!

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.