Fix-It-Friday

Time for another Fix-It-Friday on I ♥ Faces! I'm a day late, but I really liked this picture of these sweet babies. The original photo belongs to JamieLee. I just fixed it up a bit!

Original Photo

And here are two of my edits of it. This one was fun...just a little crop then adding lots of soft tones on that baby skin!

Day Sixteen

Another uninspired day...it was raining outside so I was stuck doing another indoor daily photo project. I guess I just need to invest in some rain gear for my camera...haha. I decided to give the HDR thing another try. I took several shots of the same scene at different exposures (a technique called bracketing) and then merged them together. This time I used a software called Photomatix. I didn't like it the first time I tried it, but I thought I would give it another shot. (I'm only using the free trial right now, which is why there is watermark on the finished product.) I think I just need to take more exciting photos in order to be more excited about the results...lol! In the first two photos, notice how there are areas of under- or overexposure...when the window is at the right exposure, the room is too dark, and when the room is exposed correctly, the window is too light. In the merged third photo, all areas, including the scene out the window, are properly exposed. I don't like how it turned the wood tones on the headboard red, but in all honesty, I don't care enough to fiddle with it anymore tonight! Lol. It's a really neat concept that I plan to keep working on.

And now, here is an example of what a true HDR photo SHOULD look like! These are some sample photos of the canals of Venice that I unfortunately did not take, but I did process with Photomatix. Very beautiful results.

Fix-It-Friday

Today's fix-it photo was submitted by Christina from 3 Sweet P's. She wrote: "This is a photo of my 2 year-old Parker. I am bothered by the harsh shadow on his face and the washed out colors of the photo. His eyes are a beautiful blue and you just can't see that. I would love to see what you guys can come up with!"

ORIGINAL PHOTO

I did a few different edits this week for fun. The first one, where I cropped in on the face, was an idea that was inspired by one of the I ♥ Faces contributors (although I like hers much better!). In the other two, I just tried to lighten the picture a bit and bring out the eyes a little more. I am also starting to get into using textures, so I tried it out on all three of my edits!

EDIT #1 - Black and White Close Crop

EDIT #2 - Cooler Tones

EDIT #3 - Warmer Tones

Day Twelve

I'm going to cheat a little bit today and instead of posting a picture I took today, I'm going to post a picture I edited today. The original photo is of my uncle and some of his friends. My grandmother really likes the picture of my uncle, but wanted to see if I could crop the other people out of it. I told her I would give it a shot! I ended up doing mostly cut and paste work with a little bit of clone stamping. It's definitely not seamless (don't look too closely!!!), but I think for a first try, it works!

Collages

Just downloaded some great collage templates for Lightroom...love them!! If you have Lightroom 3 Beta, you can get the templates here.

I ♥ Faces - Then Me/Now Me

The theme at I ♥ Faces this week is super silly! It was inspired by this website, which you should definitely check out...some of them are hilarious!! The assignment was to recreate a photo of yourself from when you were younger. Here is mine!

Lol! It's a little rough in the post-processing department, but it was fun to do! Be sure to check out the other funny entries at I ♥ Faces!

HDR

I have been doing some research on HDR (high dynamic range) imaging, and today I downloaded a plug-in for Lightroom called Enfuse. Basically, it merges together several photos taken at different exposures to create the maximum amount of detail/optimal exposure throughout the entire image. For example, I took these two photos a few weeks ago after work...

In this first photo, the building (Rebecca's Wedding Boutique) is exposed enough to see the detail on and in front of it, but the sky is completely blown out.

In this second photo, you can see the dramatic sky and clouds, but the building is silhouetted against it.

Sooooo...I put both photos into Lightroom, clicked on the Enfuse action, and voila! Now you can see the detail in the building AND the dramatic sky (and the green leaves on the tree)!

Overall, the photo is not the most impressive subject matter, but it was fun learning a new post-processing trick! Hopefully as I play with this some more, I can produce some more exciting images! Like these...

(I also liked the HDR in black and white!)

Fix-It-Friday

It's Fix-It-Friday again over at I ♥ Faces! Here is the original photo, submitted by Angie:

And after cropping, adding a layer of soft light, some gaussian blur, cloning out the yellow sign behind her, and adding some vignetting, here is my edit:

Just for fun, I did a B+W edit, too.

Fix-It Friday

Every Friday over at I ♥ Faces, there is a new post-processing challenge given to all of us loyal followers! This is the first time I have participated. I am usually quite befuddled still when it comes to Photoshop, but I think I did a decent job on this one!

Here is the original photo:

Submitted by Natalie

And here is my edit:

Learning More Photoshop Stuff!

Out of Bounds

One vintage treatment

Another vintage treatment

Blurred everything but the couple and gave the photo a border

Playing with Photoshop

I am very much a beginner at Photoshop, and am slowly learning a few tricks! Here are some before and after examples of two things I did yesterday.