Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Shot of the day

Not a great shot but just a few seconds with the old editing tools and you can turn a picture like this...
Shutter 1/125 Aperture f/1.4 ISO 1600 Tungsten

Into a picture like this...
Greatly improved. But wait, there's more.
With a little tinkering I think I've figured out what types of things She might be tweaking to make her pictures look so awesome - contrast, baby. With a few exposure adjustments and a touch of sharpness. (Although she is using a rockin' camera - Canon 5D. Color me jealous.) Some (including Canadian people like Darren, eh?) might say the pic's a bit overexposed but this color/contrast thing is totally appealing to me. Bright. Vivid. Picture yumminess all wrapped up in a bow, which is perfect given that Christmas is nearly upon us. Now, since I'm using the old laptop, Molly, and she has Photoshop Elements, let's see what happens when I do some fancy tricks. (I'm actually only going to try one trick and I only know how to do it because I have a book that explains the process. Hold please.)
VoilĂ ! A little vignetting and sparkly eyes and we're done! (I lied. It was totally two tricks.)

5 comments:

Rachele said...

have you seen in her FAQ she describes the process to make your photos "mashed potato-y" like hers? She hasn't written the tutorial on the darkened edges yet, though.

Christie said...

I did see that. I've played with the Gaussian blur before and thought it was pretty cool. I'm reading these books by Scott Kelby - he's the photoshop magazine editor dude - and he's got great tips, including how to do the darkened (or lightened) edges and how to add the sparkle to the eye. (Create another layer and sharpen the heck out of it.)

It's all a bunch of photo trickery! But I do really like the way she slightly overexposes her shots.

Dr. A said...

WOW. I can not believe the first photo and the last are the same.

I guess they aren't.
We're not allowed to do tricks like that with the pictures we take in the lab. Darn it.

There's a magazine just for photoshop?

B. E. Busby said...

OK -- I tried taking your original and sharpened, color shifted (dousing a touch of the green), goosed the highlights and got this:

http://tinyurl.com/yhklngz

Christie said...

Ash - I'm sure there is more than one, but, yes, there is a mag for Photoshop and this guy is like the king of that mag. I like his little books because they tell you how to do something by giving you steps instead of abstractly talking about the process using all of that high falootin' photography language.

B - I like it! (I'm probably a wee bit biased but...) What ye be using?