I know this post is WAY overdue, but I had most of it written out last night when I went to bed, and then my computer updated and rebooted while I was sleeping.

Note to self: always save drafts.

straight out of the camera (sooc)

First thing I did was apply one of my own Lightroom presets called “vintage purple”

My presets aren’t really for sale or give-a-way (maybe one day) but this basically boosted the exposure, added some clarity & vibrance, took away a bit of saturation, and then I used split tones in tan (highlights) & purple (shadows).

Clearly, that made it too bright, so I wanted to work on that a little bit.

I took down the exposure all the way back down to 0 and increased the blacks to 16.

I also jacked up the highlight recovery to do away with the crazy overexposure around the top right corner of the camera.

My shadow saturation (the purple) was actually a little too purple’y, so I took it down quite a bit to make it more of a lavender.

Then, I bumped up the contrast even more.

And cropped it.

Imported that image into Photoshop Elements 5.0 so I could fix it up a little more and add a fun texture.

I immediately added a fill layer of navy blue #0f0f3d and put it into exclusion mode and changed opacity to 80%.

Added another fill layer of pure white #ffffff and changed the opacity to 5%.

Added this texture in overlay mode and changed opacity to 70% and then erased it over the camera (eraser set at 35% opacity).

Then, I copied the background (control-J) and moved that to the top of the layers and set it to soft light blending mode at 80% opacity.

Flattened the layers and TA-DA!

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please post them in the comments and I will reply there. I hope you enjoyed it!

Please add my feed to your rss reader if you are interested in seeing more tutorials like this.

I’ve had many people ask me to share my processing techniques for my images. Funny thing is, I don’t really do the same thing every time, and most of the time, I just play until it looks good. So it’s hard to just say, “Well, I did this and this and this.” But for you … I will try. ;)

Note: I process all of my images in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 5.0

So we’re going to start with this image …

I know what you’re thinking. Um, dude? That’s blurry. Well, yes. I decided to use a particularly bad image to show you how drastic just a few changes can be. But I actually like the movement in this picture since she’s running around so carefree. I think it adds to the image.

It really does work. You’ll see. (Don’t go scrolling down to see, yet — be patient!)

We also have that horrible blownout light across the top of the image, and it’s just not composed very well AT ALL.

I’ve been a little obsessed with square crops lately, so I did that, purposefully keeping Jessie in the shot, because our dogs rarely get camera time these days, poor things.

Then, I just applied my “in shades of brown” preset.

Without just giving away my “formula” this preset basically warms up the image, adds a little green tint, bumps up the exposure, bumps down the saturation, and then split tones it with some tan highlights and light purple shadows. Among other things.

But. It still isn’t “right.” It looks like it’s just blurry, ya know?

So this is where textures come into play. I love textures. I love how they can totally add a completely different element to an image. It’s a whole other layer, both literally and figuratively.

On this image, I stuck with Florabella Textures, which were recently featured on I ♥ Faces. She has done some amazing things with these textures, and I can almost guarantee I’ll find the texture(s) I want when I open up my Florabella folder.

I used …
antique square in overlay mode @ 100%
champagne square in soft light mode @ 100%

I also copied the background image and put it into multiply mode @ 50% because the 2 textures had lightened it up significantly.

And then I added the creamy white border to add an even more vintage flair, kind of like those old polaroids.

After all the textures are added, and the image meets my approval, I just go to layer -> flatten image, then select -> all.

Image -> Resize -> Canvas Size

With these settings …

By the way, this is also a great way to add a black border without cutting into your image.

And here is the final product …

It’s amazing how much difference a little crop & texture can do to an image!

And here you all thought I was a decent photographer. ;)

You’ll notice in a lot of my pictures that I use rounded corners — I love the retro feel and uniqueness.

Uniqueness … is that a word? I’m not getting a spell-check notice, so I guess it is. Cool.

Anyway, I have a few people ask me how to get rounded corners, so I’m going to give you three ways to put rounded corners on your pictures.

The first way is the easiest … Picnik. It’s a {mostly} free online photo editing program — I say {mostly} because you can do a whole WHOLE lot for free. Or you can pay a small fee to have even more editing options. But the rounded corners option is free …

Anyway, it’s listed under the “Create” tab as a “Frame.” You can adjust the radius to make it either a little rounded or a LOT rounded.

The second way is also quite easy if you have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Just go to the “Develop” section, and then to “Vignettes — Post-Crop”

amount: +100
midpoint: 50
roundness: -90 (you can adjust this number to make it less or more rounded)
feather: 0

If you are putting the image on a black background (like a photo blog?) then just set the “amount” to -100.

And finally, this is how I do it in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Now, I don’t have Photoshop CS because I chose to purchase Lightroom instead. I honestly don’t know if it’s the same in Photoshop CS, but I’m sure it’s close enough.

step 1: open your image …

step 2: choose the “rounded rectangle tool” under shapes

step 3: set the radius to 90px

You can change that number to make it more or less rounded – I almost always use from 90px to around 94px.

step 4: draw the rounded rectangle around the entire image

It doesn’t matter what color the rectangle is, because you’re going to fix that in the next step

step 5: set opacity to 0%

step 6: while still having the “rounded rectangle tool” selected, right click on the image and select “make selection”

step 7: make sure you have “feather radius” set to 0px and check “anti-aliased”

step 8: go to “edit” on the menu bar and select “copy merged”

step 9: go to “file” and select “new -> image from clipboard”

step 10: save it and you’re done!

Now. Go have fun making rounded corners!! I love taking pictures and applying vintage’y presets or actions and then using the rounded corners … it takes me back to my childhood pictures.

And while we’re talking about photos *coughcough self-promotion coming coughcough* … I added some new prints to my Etsy shop if you’re interested. Sorry about that.

Also, if you read this blog and see a photo on here that you would be interested in buying, please let me know!! I’ll be happy to list it for you at the shop in whatever size you want.