Show Your Skills Linkup!

My friend Amanda of Everyday Elements, is hosting this Show Your Skills linkup and this week, we are using her barbed wire picture with cow's hair tangled up in it! I've included her original image, so you can see the before and after.

If any of you would like to join in, there's still time and hey, if you want to learn how to edit your own pictures Amanda is a great teacher! Check out her website and all of her free video tutorials, plus free actions, textures and editing tips etc.  She also offers very affordable live online workshops, if you're interested and trust me, you will learn sooo much! 

This is my edit and here is a very quick run down of what I did....

Levels adjustment  50  1.12  222 > Hue/Sat adjustment> Saturation +22> Photo Filter> Blue 77%> added some overlays and a texture at different opacities, until I got the colors I wanted. I used Soft Light blending mode on all of them except one...on that one, I used the Saturation blending mode!  I darkened the barb underneath the wire just a smidge and I sharpened the middle of the barb just a smidge also. As you can see, I like color....it may not be appealing to some, but I am drawn to warm colors!  :)

This is Amanda's original sooc image!  I love this shot and I thoroughly enjoyed playing with it in photoshop elements!  Thanks Amanda, this was fun! :)



Love Your Shot Link Up!

This is my first submission to the Love Your Shot Link Up over at Love That Shot!  I took this photo of Hannah Burk, in a recent photo shoot, for her senior pictures and I am in love with her gorgeous brown eyes and beautiful face!

Canon EOS Rebel XSi ~ 50 mm f/1.8 lens ~ Aperture f/2.8 ~ Shutter Speed 1/40 sec ~ ISO ~ 200 ~ Focal Lenth 50.0 mm  (This is my final edit and the one she will use as one of her senior pics.)  Scroll to the bottom of this post to see the original (sooc) shot and work your way up to see the Post Processing steps.

In this final edit I went back and darkened her lips just a tad and then I used the lasso magnetic tool to remove some of the texture from the background while leaving the color, then added a slight vignette  and I love the end result! 

Next I added a texture on overlay blend mode and lowered the opacity to 60% and used the magnetic lasso tool to erase the texture off of the skin, while leaving the tint (color). I then added the same texture, but this time I erased the texture off of the skin entirely and then I added one more texture on softlight blend mode, just to brighten up her eyes and skin a bit more.  

I did a clean edit using Amanda, of Everyday Elements Deep Clean 1 & 2 actions, which I adore. I removed blemishes, lightened up all of the shadows on the one side of her face, evened up her skin tone,  softened her hair just a bit etc. I then ran Amanda's Eye Tricks action and then her Newberry action and tweaked all the layers, plus I changed the color of her clothes by using the "bring out the blues" layer in Newberry. I used a white brush 63 % layer opacity and then just brushed over her clothes and raised the layer opacity to suit.

This is the original straight out of the camera shot and as you can see, it's a bit dark because the sun was setting and there wasn't much light left in the sky, but I was having too much fun shooting to stop! LOL