A week or so ago, Sarah asked me how I got this picture of Emma to look like that, so I thought I’d walk through a typical “photo editing” process for me.
Let me preface by saying that I am not very good at it. I am still learning every day. I am constantly Google’ing “blahblahblah tutorial” for whatever I’m trying to do. I read articles and books, and I still don’t “get it” most of the time. I am most definitely NOT a professional by any means. I just really enjoy taking pictures, and out of the hundreds I take, sometimes I get a half-decent one. And thank goodness for Photoshop Elements and Picnik for making them look pretty good.
This probably won’t be a regular segment of my blog, because I really just play around more than anything, and I have no idea what is going to look good until I’m done with it. I truly have no idea what I’m doing.
For today’s lesson (hee) I’m going to use my picture from today’s Project365 – the theme is “Bokeh Wednesday” {in layman’s terms, bokeh is the blurry background of a picture} – so I went outside while E was napping and snapped this picture of my neighbor’s tree with their green shrub in the background to give it that green bokeh.
This is SOOC (straight out of the camera)
Not horrible, but not wonderful, either.
So I opened it up in Photoshop Elements and did the following …
1. Created new levels adjustment layer – I just moved the little slider around until I was happy with the results.
2. Duplicate background layer – and put into Screen mode. Change the opacity to 35%.
3. Duplicate background layer again. Drag the Tint Blue on top of the new layer (it’s under Photo Effects)
4. Put into Overlay mode – change the opacity to 75%
5. Flatten image and save.
Now, I went ahead and uploaded it like it is for my Project 365 – you can see it here.
But then I played with it in Picnik – I applied cross-processing (my favorite!) and then rounded corners.
Now, if you don’t have Photoshop, don’t sweat it. Ignore this entire post and head on over to Picnik — it is a great GREAT photo editing website, it’s easy and fun, and you can do SO many things to your pictures.
xo
