Stalking Geese

I love the fields of geese near our home here in MD.  I kept passing by them without my camera (or even cameraphone!) .  I finally remembered to put my camera in the car and realized that I am officially stalking the geese.  Here's a pic I took today:

Photo Collage

Today I obsessed over a multi-photo frame.  Here's the result:

Photoshop Actions

I got PSE8 for my birthday and have finally installed some actions.  Here's how they work:  You find them online and download them into Photoshop.  Then they appear in your styles and effects palette.  They save a ton of time!  For example, say I'm starting with this photo:

I love those baby blues, but the bright red shirt is distracting.  I can try "Selective Color" and it runs automatically, creating layers with layer masks, etc.  Then I can just paint where I want to see color and get this: 

I can also change the color of just the shirt by selecting with the magic wand and desaturating:

They have actions for creating vignettes, retouching portraits, selective color, making pics look antique, etc. 

Have fun!

Prepping photos for framing

I wanted to frame my kids' recent school photos in the 4x6 frames I'd recently bought.  Here's the original pic of my son:

The problem was that they weren't the right proportion and I didn't want to crop them.  To solve the problem, I stole a page from the digital scrapbooking book.  I opened a 4x6 document in Photoshop and covered it with a patterned digital scrapbooking paper.  Then, I plopped the photo down on top of it.

I adjusted the saturation and lightness until my (originally green) paper matched the gray background.  Then, with a soft brush set at 22% opacity, I erased the background to allow the pattern to show through.   Here's the finished result:

The original picture of my daughter:

And the 4x6 version:

Framed!

For some reason, decorating relieves stress for me.  That creates a bit of a conundrum because during this stressful time I'm living in someone else's home!  Fortunately, my mother-in-law has been very gracious. 

Color Theory:  In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, everybody painted their living room walls mauve.  It is said that mauve relieves insanity.  It is a color often used in prisons and hospitals for similar reasons. 

To ward off depression during my hubby's deployment, I painted my room (AKA the guest bedroom) bright green.  I hung gorgeous white curtains and bought a white duvet cover set that I have plans for....
Then I played musical frames.  I started with these:

After a quick swap, we have:

I bought two 4x6 frames in a similar ornate dark wood.  I then added pics of the kids (more on that soon):

 

I like the way it's turning out.  What are you working on?