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:

Bittersweet Baby Book

I've finally completed my daughter's baby book.  She's my youngest, so it is bittersweet to be done with baby books.  Someday, if I'm ever completely caught up, I can go back and make things better.  For now, it's going into storage. 

I've made my first Photoshop collage with pictures of the pages:

Sparkles

I've finally found a way to add twinkles to the picture from the September post, "Photoshop Magic?"

To recap, here's the original pic:

 I'd changed the background color, but couldn't master adding my own sparkles.

Today, I downloaded some pictures of the night sky and used them like I would a texture. 

Here are the results:

As you can imagine, the dark photos totally overwhelmed the picture of my daughter when I was scanning through the blend modes.  Today's tip to help get around that issue:  Have multiple, identical layers of the lighter pic.  Then when you blend them together, it's 2 to 1!

Object Swap

Making Memories recently had a challenge based on the song lyrics "Every generation has a chance to change the world."  A picture of my son sprang to mind.  In it, he was holding a big green balloon.  I decided to see if I could turn it into a globe. 

I first removed the string and tie.  Then I pasted a globe onto a new layer.  Tip: By adjusting the opacity of the globe, I could see where his fingers were (so I knew exactly where to erase).

  

I look forward to hearing your thoughts! 

No Anne Geddes

I'm no Anne Geddes, but I have to experiment on something while I learn about Photoshop.  Here is the fruit of today's labors:

Photoshop Magic?

As soon as I saw this picture of my daughter, I knew I wanted to play with it.  I had dreams of adding a little magic with fairy-like sparkles. 

I first changed the color of the background (as done in the post, "A Beginning").  I gave it a soft blur and brightened her up a bit.  I then added a layer of texture (64% opacity) and smoothed it over her face and arm (as done in "Photoshop Textures", with the healing brush). 

I think it lends her an ethereal quality and the sparkles I've tried so far have just looked cheesy.  I'm continuing my research and this may not be the final incarnation of this pic, but I thought I'd share with you what I've done so far. 

With Halloween approaching, how do you add magic to your pics?

Mother's Day Photo Shoot

I wanted to do something special for Mother's Day this year and, naturally, I thought of photos. 

I gave my son a heart "tattoo" using longwear lipstick.  With scrapbooking stickers, I spelled out "Grammy", then "Grandma", and finally "Mom".  I outfitted my daughter in a Mom tattoo t-shirt.  Here are some of my faves:

I had the bottom picture enlarged to 24x36 and printed on canvas.  I framed it and it hangs in our dining room.  Tons of people have asked about the background.  Did I take it at the beach and then wash out the colors?  Nope.  It's a white backdrop!  All these pics were taken in our backyard.  

Photoshop Textures

This tip was shared with me by an amazing photographer at my church: Cheryl Groff. 
Here's a helpful video tutorial: 


If you're having trouble viewing the video, the steps are something like this.
Start with an open picture in Photoshop.  I'm using this picture I took of my baby girl in a lake that's very sentimental.  I wanted to give it more of a historic, timeless feel.  Start by pressing Ctrl+J to make an editable layer.

Next, open a picture of a texture (you can Google "Photoshop Textures" to find some).  I wanted something with a sepia tint and a border effect- I found a linen texture that might work.  Some newer programs can drag and drop.  In Elements 4.0 I had to Select >All and then with the entire texture selected, hit Edit> Copy.

Then from my original photo I could Edit>Paste to layer the texture over the photo.  It's scary at first, because it covers the entire original photo, but just play with the options in the Layers box ("palette") to adjust the opacity and merge the layers with effects like "Soft Light".

My biggest problem at this point was the linen texture on my daughter- not the most flattering.  So the next trick removes that.  Open a new window with a blank layer in it.  Using the paint can tool, fill the layer with a random color.  Now here's the important part: Select the healing brush (looks like a Band-Aid) [*Note: Make sure you've selected the Healing Brush and NOT the Spot Healing Brush] Alt+click in the midle of your colored layer.  That will select the texture of that layer to copy (and it has no texture).

Now in your photo, still on the top textured layer, paint with the Healing Brush over the areas where you don't want the texture.  (At first it appears to be painting with your chosen color, but fear not.  That will disappear when you let go.)  Works like magic!  Flatten and save!  Here's my finished photo:

I might continue to play with different textures on this photo, but love the technique!  Have fun with it!

A beginning

 Every day I seem to have a new obsession- something that I spend hours online researching.  Be it cake decorating, interior decorating, Photoshop, scrapbooking, or something entirely random, I've decided to post some of the fruits of my labors here. 

 On tap for today: Digital photography and alteration 
I work with the Canon Digital Rebel XT.  It takes great photos.  But what to do when you want to alter a photo?  I've had great success with  Microsoft Photo Editor (no longer available with Vista) and would sometimes use multiple programs to achieve the desired results.  I've just begun to delve into Photoshop with Photoshop Elements 4.0 and I'll share as I learn. 

First up: Changing background color. 

I am a mother of 2 stinkin' adorable children.  They've taken some great pictures at school, but I hate the background they use.  It's a mottled fleshtone sort of color.  (See above)  It's a cute pic, but the background makes her outfit the center of attention.

First: open the pic in Photoshop and Press Ctrl+J to make an editable layer of the image (as opposed to the background layer).

Using the magic wand tool, I begin to select the background.  *Tip: it's often easier to select the background and then inverse the selection than to get all the colors of the foreground image.
Start with a pretty high tolerance if the color is significantly different than the foreground (maybe 80).  My colors were all pretty similar, so I started the selection at 35 and went down to 10-15 for detail work. 
Press Shift while clicking to add an area to the selection.
Press Alt while clicking to tell it not to select an area.
Once you have the background selected, right-click and select the inverse.  (Now your foreground image is selected).  Press Ctrl+J to make a new layer with your selected image.

Now for the fun part:  Select the layer that is currently sandwiched between your background and your selected image (it's just a copy of your original pic).  Click the 'Enhance' tab and then colors: Hue/Saturation. *Tip: make sure to check the "Colorize" box in the pop-up! 

Now you can change the hue and saturation levels at whim!  Play with this layer as much as you like until the background is the color you want.  Here's my finished pic:

Now the focus is on her smiling face! 

If you have any other great tips on the subject, please post them!  Comments welcome!