Friday, October 29, 2010

Photo Editing Fun | Fix It Friday #76

It's Friday again!  Admittedly, my favorite day of the week!  It's that day of the week that kind of sort of  says, "Yes!  It's okay to wind down and prepare for a glorious weekend!" Plus, I look forward every week to Fix It Friday at iheartfaces!  Thank you Susan Keller of Susan Keller Photography for contributing this gorgeous photo of your littlest dude!  What a cutie! ...and thank you so much for all the tutorials and tips you provide.  You are such a wealth of knowledge and inspiration!

Edit #1 - Adjusted the color balance to reduce the orange cast.


Edit #2 - Used Florabella Ambrosia action (85% opacity) from the Luxe collection. Added a texture (using overlay) and masked texture from the face.


Edit #3 - For fun used the same texture using color burn (55% opacity) for drama - left the texture in full with no masking of the face - I liked the artistic quality the texture gave to the overall picture.


The SOOC


Have an incredibly special weekend!

Love and blessings!
Kathy

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Trees...

Wouldn't it be a wonderful day to get lost in nature with camera in hand with the primary purpose of capturing the essence of God's creation?  Everyday, I see beauty everywhere.  On Saturday, I woke up to a foggy morning and took some snapshots.   Then I tried my hand at editing one of my favorite shots. Let me know which one you like best!

Trees
Beautiful
Elegant
Quiet
Knowing
Presence

Love and blessings!
Kathy














Friday, October 22, 2010

Fix-It Friday #75 | Photo Editing Fun!

Another Fix-it Friday at iheartfaces...celebrating the wonderful colors of fall!  Here is my edit for this week! I used the 'London' Florabella action from the Luxe collection to pull out the beautiful colors!



Take a peak at all of the other wonderful edits at iheartfaces!

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!!!

Love and blessings! Kathy oxoxo

Friday, October 8, 2010

It’s Constructive Feedback Friday! -- at Iheartfaces!

My edit
In lieu of their typical Fix-it Friday, Iheartfaces is hosting a Constructive Feedback Friday where photographers in the Iheartfaces community can give their feedback and tips on how to fix or edit your photo.  I edited this photo of my daughter, Alexandria.  As I explained in my last post, this session was taken just before dusk and we felt rush.  Nevertheless, the whole session came out slightly blurry... :P  I was soooo bummed.  I want to try to salvage at least one of the photos from the session.  Unfortunately, I don't have a flicker account.  (Well I kind of do...but I'm embarrassed because I don't know how to use it!) ...so here is the SOOC.
SOOC

I would love, love, love your feedback and edits!

Have a joyous day!  Love and blessings!  Kathy

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Love Your Shot! | Link-Up!



Found another fun website for photographers called 'love that shot'... (they've got the cutest blog button!) They are hosting a photo challenge called "Your favorite faces" and the winner will receive a $100 gift certificate from Florabella Actions and Textures which I love, love, love!!!  So... I thought I'd give it a shot! (no pun intended...hee hee!)  I recently did a little photo session with my daughter for fun.  We had a little Mother-Daughter outing to CityPlace here in West Palm Beach, FL (great shops, restaurants and a little bit of culture -- for Florida).  It was near dusk and the lighting was low and my daughter was a little embarrassed to be posing in front of people so I rushed and... the whole session was a little fuzzy and I was totally bummed.  But I still loved the photos because the essence of her spirit is captured in them. Instead of scrapping the whole session of photos, I decided to have fun and play with a couple of the photos.  They may not be 'technically' wonderful, but I can make them artistically beautiful...something special and creative of one of my most favorite faces of all...my daughter, Alexandria.

SOOC
So I took this photo that was a little fuzzy and sharpened it a little more to increase the quality of the photo.  Cropped out the statue to the right and then applied a freebie action that I fell in love with called Creamy Butter (created by Gina Miller that I found at The Lilypad).  It really does add a little creaminess to the skin! I almost stopped there...she's just so darn adorable...but the out-of-focus face made me crazy so...I decided to make the photo look painterly...

Beautiful creamy skin!
I added a soft green mineral texture set to overlay, masked out her face and then, with a paintbrush texture tool, added some sweeping texture strokes to create sweeping movement around the face.  The final results!



Beautiful Alexandria!

Close up shot of the texture
Posting photos on the web makes me crazy because a lot of times you lose the details of the photo (and I am such a details kind of girl! LOL).  So here is a closeup of the texture of the face.  Anywho...it was fun to play and since Photoshop allows you to do everything in layers, whatever you don't like you just simply remove that layer and your right back to the beginning with the ability to start a new creation.  Gotta love it!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day.  Make time to play today!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Earth laughs in flowers!

So a few weeks back, I met the sweetest gal, Emily from Family and Life in Las Vegas.  We met through our blogs during a blog hop I participated in.  From time to time, I love spending some time seeing what others are doing... and thinking... and sharing!  It's really good for the soul and the creativity process.  Anyway, Emily stopped by my blog because I had stopped by hers.  She had made a comment on my "tutus and trunks post"(still one of my favorite canvases I've created -- beautiful Baby Kendall captured by talented photographer, Vikki from Vikki Dinh Photography).  Emily made a comment that the picture was beautiful and that she always wanted to have a picture done on canvas..."maybe one day!" she said.  I thought, "There's no time like the present!" when I remembered a posting I saw on Songberries blog about a free 8x10 canvas offer by CanvasPeople.  So I told her about this offer I noticed on Songberries blog.  I was happy to offer her my services to make this happen.  A few weeks later, she sent me the following picture... It was the sweetest picture of flowers!  This is my first "nature" project for a client.  I was expecting a family picture or the kiddo picture...but instead I got a picture of flowers! How fun!


Original SOOC
Emily's vision was to create a "subway art"-styled canvas with this photo.  She wanted words like rejoice, celebrate, love, joy, etc.  She also wanted to incorporate a special quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Earth laughs in flowers." I LOVED that quote!  So I began working on this really fun project. I always create a few different versions in an effort to match the various personal tastes that varies from person to person. Here are some of the samples I created for this project.

First, I enhanced the color of the photo because I wanted it to have a really full-of-color feel to match the power of the words she requested.  Then I selected a color scheme by pulling colors from the photo and began selecting fonts that expressed the words visually to me. Then I added some pretty little sun spots and a soft milky frame to give it a little mystical feel and added some little daisy embellishments in the top corners.  I liked the results...

Color-enhanced photo
Then, I wanted to play a little more with the photo.  I just started using a trial version of a product called Topaz which has some really cool features to enhance photos.  I'd been dying to try it out so I played with their product called Clean Adjust.  It allowed me to stylize the photo...

Stylized Photo
Here is a close up of the difference between the color enhanced photo compared to the stylized photo...

Close up of the color-enhanced photo
Closeup of stylized photo
The stylized just added a little more texture and line to the photo.  I personally really love this effect for this particular photo.

Then I did another version, a little more of a crisp clean look (knowing that not everyone likes the embellished artsy look.)
Crisp clean version
I sent these versions to Emily to get her feedback.  It's a good time in the process to get a better idea of what the client likes (and don't like) and fine tune to the finish product.  Emily asked if I could create a lace-like frame. I wanted to see how a closer-in crop of the picture would look like so I created this...

Lace frame with a closer view of the flowers

In the end, Emily chose this version of the photo for the final printing of the canvas... The stylized photo including the really cool quote with the milky frame, sunspots and sweet daisy embellishments.  The gallery wrap sides of the canvas will be a dark sky blue that matches to the darker portion of the sky.  She sounded thrilled and I gotta tell you that is the best part of what I do!

Emily's pick
 Here's my favorite version...pretty much same as Emily's pick but with a closer-in view of the flower!
My pick
Emily promised me a picture of the final canvas when she receives it back from CanvasPeople.  I will post it here...I'm hoping it turns out great!!!

What's your favorite version?

Love and blessings!
Kathy

Friday, October 1, 2010

Fix-It Friday #73 | Photo Editing Fun!

Once again, it is Fix-It Friday over at iheartfaces.  This weeks photo is an adorable photo of Keli Hoskins' daughter, Emma.  Here is my attempt of creating a sweet vintage style of her portrait.


Take a look at all the other edits at iheartfaces! Congratulations and best wishes to Keli and her new baby girl, Lucy Jane!