Shoot & Edit ~ Faith, Edited!

Faith, SOOC:

Faith, Edited:

I cropped it to start. The lights on the ceiling were REALLY bugging me. I was drawn to them and not to my brother. {There wasn't much time to set up the pictures. There were over 200 Confirmands that morning so it wasn't really a sit & chat sort of event.} I adjusted the sharpness (motion blur), and brightened/contrasted the picture a bit. Then adjusted the color curves by darkening the highlights. But I really didn't like how it looked. 

So I converted it to B&W and called it a day.

Now that I'm looking at it, I totally should have cloned out the part of the light that is still there. Oh well. :) 

PHEW. I'm even late getting this up. Seriously, this week was nuts! 

Shoot & Edit ~ Faith, SOOC

Faith ~ SOOC
What a fitting theme this week as we just went North this past weekend for my brother's Confirmation! I am disappointed with the blur in this picture but I hope that with some editing I can save it! :) 

My Google Chrome couldn't display the linky so... I couldn't link up. I will link my edit on Thursday. :)

Maybe it will work for you and then you can check out all the SOOC shots at Jill's blog. :)  

Shoot & Edit ~ Up, Edited

Good to Wow ~ UP

SOOC

Really not a terrible SOOC!

Inverted SOOC + Paint Bucket (Color #599f8e)

Greeting Card. I dig it.

Equalize + Backlight Adjust + Lighten Shadows 91% + Brightness 60% + Movie Prime Lens Flare @ 182%

I like this edit, I had to play around with the Lens Flare until I found a "size" that I liked. I was going for a "sun" effect. I think I got it? I'm not sure. But I think I got the placement correct, as far as where the flare should be coming from. Maybe I should have moved the flare more right, almost off the picture? 

Same adjustments as above, but without the Lens Flare

This makes me feel like I'm on the prairie. No, I can't really explain that further. Haha! I think this was my most normal edit. Is this considered a "clean" edit? I'm not sure. I like it though as it still captures the effervescence of the tree that day. I'm not sure a tree can be effervescent. But that's the word that popped in my mind so I'm sticking to it! 

Equalize + Backlight Adjust + Lighten Shadows 91% + Brightness 60% + Add Layer -> Garden Lights 2 (from Ashley) + Eraser 32% around the branches + Eyedropper tool to get blending color + Paintbrush, on Overlay with Opacity at 37% to blend it together (I was sort of guessing here?). I'm not sure what I was doing. BUT this is how it turned out:

I did not follow Ashley's directions mainly because I work in PSE 5.0. So I winged it. I think I need to work on the blending and the opacity of the garden effect. But overall, it's sort of dreamy and I'm fine with this edit.

I am REALLY having a lot of fun with editing. I might enjoy it more than I like taking the pictures! :)

And apparently I needed to purchase more storage in order to upload more pictures for this post??? So for $5 I purchased (well, Hubby purchased ha) 20 GB more of storage. I'm pretty sure that'll last me for a while. I've had the account this blog is linked to since... 2005? 2006? Probably 2006. I'm actually a little surprised I didn't run out of space earlier! :) 

Okay ~ So thanks for stopping by my blog!! Check out all the other awesome edits over at Ashley's blog! 

Have a fabulous Thursday! We are headed to the allergist this afternoon for Snowdrop's peanut & milk allergies.... we have so many questions that need answering! :)

Shoot & Edit ~ Up, SOOC

Good to Wow ~ Shoot & Edit Challenge

UP

Come back on Thursday to see how I edit this one!

I'm not sure it's so bad to begin with! :) 

Head on over to Jill's blog to enter your SOOC shot! On Thursday, go to Ashley's blog to enter your edited picture ~ and to check out all the other awesome edits! 

Thanks for stopping by! :) 

Shoot & Edit ~ Green, Edited!

Hi there! Thanks for stopping in to check my edit for this week. I am having so much fun exploring all the different things I can do to pictures. The creative side of my brain thanks me. Profusely. I mean, I didn't do anything astounding this week ~ it's just fun to do. :)

Look and see!!

Here is the SOOC picture:

{boooooooooooooooring}

The first things I did

Some lighting adjustments, like:

{Brightness, +29}

{Contrast, +35}

{Shadows, 50%}

{Darken Highlights, 1%}

{Midtone Contrast, 13%}

Then I cropped it.

And adjusted the colors. I forget what I did, whatever the color curves suggested that I liked. :)

I add layers between almost every step by the way.

Added another layer and made it B&W. I adjusted the B&W to my liking.

Then I got out the handy-dandy eraser, and erased all the part where the main pepper was. 

I wanted the color to POP!! What do you think?

Then I Ctrl +Z'd until I got back to after the step where I adjusted the color curves. Here's where I had some real fun!!! If you go to the toolbar and check out the Filters --> Adjustments --> Posterize. This is my picture, Posterized. With a quote.

This is cute, yes?

Scratch back to after color curving.... I cropped the picture again. This time, getting as close to the pepper as possible. Then I went to the Filters tab --> Distort --> Polar Coordinates. Here's where it gets tricky, not really. I selected Polar to Rectangular. You could also choose Rectangular to Polar. {Some of you might remember when Ashley did a tutorial on the whole polar thing... I don't have the link but if you're a follower of her blog, you probably know what I'm talking about. I think hers was Rec. to Polar.} When you select Polar Coordinates, the program will prompt you to select either one. 

This is what that edit looked like.

I'm not "in love" but I don't hate it either. It's just weird. It makes me think of 'Monsters, Inc.' Or some sort of bad 60's horror flick. Anyone?

Okay, one more edit. You still there?? :) 

Back to right after cropping the picture for a second time.

Then, Filter -> Stylize --> Glowing Edges

Tubular! I was NOT expecting that outcome! 

Obviously this is my favorite edit of them all. 

I could see this in my beach house. You know, if I had one.

~

Check out all the other awesome edits this week from Shoot & Edit. Link up your SOOC shot on Monday at Jill's blog, and your edited one on Thursdays at Ashley's blog! Hope to see you there. 

Thanks again for stopping by my blog. :) 

Shoot & Edit ~ Green

Green is the theme this week for Shoot & Edit with Jill & Ashley! Share and post your SOOC shot over at Jill's blog today, and share your edited picture at Ashley's blog on Thursday! Ok? Awesome!!~
Here's my SOOC for this week:

Come back & check out my edited picture on Thursday!! Thanks for stopping by. :) 

Shoot & Edit ~ Part Two: March 2011/Flowers

Okay so this is Part Two of the Shoot & Edit Challenge! I'm excited to show you what I did for my edits!! And I hope to participate in this challenge again. Maybe not next week, but definitely during April. :) 

This is the Original:

Can you even see anything? Probably not.

Ashley suggested I try inverting the picture. Which I did. 

Here it is, Inverted:

I don't think I really like what it did to this photo BUT I'm excited to try the idea on other pictures! I had never used the "Invert" function in PSE {or many of the other functions you'll see below). 

I totally dig what it's supposed to do! 

Since that didn't really work out too well, I tried to do something else. 

This next picture is Inverting + Equalizing:

I like this one! The blues are really cool, no pun intended. 

Here's Inverting + Photo Filter {in a rusty orangey hue similar to that of the blossoms on the tree}:

Meh. Doesn't knock my socks off. Too plain. Not enough 'oomph'. But I like the feature. I'm not even sure though, if the color is going to show up once I post this. 

I've never played around with these filters so this was really fun to try out. 

Inverted (?) + Charcoal/Chalk

I really like this one a lot! I might even frame it. It might be my favorite out of the bunch. :)

Fresco

I like this! It's fire-y! Bold! It's got spunk! :)

Inverted + Fresco

I like how this looks so much like a drawing. I'd like to try this on some portraits of the girls. I think with grainy pictures it might work well? I could be completely wrong on that! :)

Plain Old Lighting Fix {Lighten shadows, brighten as a whole, contrast}

I like this one. Still somewhat plain. I really didn't do anything other than adjust the lighting levels. It's definitely one of my favorite edits from this series and most captures the way I saw it with my eyes.

Here are ALL my edits together with the original so you can see all the different ways I edited it.

Hope you found this interesting. :) 

I am having a weird night, sorry my commentary is lacking. 

Thanks for understanding. :)

Check out the other edited pictures at Ashley's blog, here.

Shoot & Edit ~ Part One: March 2011

This is my very first time participating in the Shoot & Edit Photo Thursday "challenge" {or whatever. I don't know if challenge is the right word.} The theme this week is Flowers. I hadn't expected to participate in the challenge, but I was downloading pictures from my camera while reading my Blogroll and came across the challenge AND the picture. The shoe fit, what can I say! And so... I'm participating! :) 
Last night, we were watching TV and my gaze kept drifting to the tree outside the front window. The blossoms had just appeared in the last couple days. They looked so orangey against the blue sky ~ fluffy like a puff pastry... The tree & blossoms really looked so beautiful in the streetlight ~ unfortunately, once I got out there my camera was unable to capture the moment. Here is the SOOC picture!

Funny, it actually looks better on Blogger's Edit Post page than in Photoshop.HA! It looks like a big black blob of nothing in PSE. Weird.

Anywho. I'll post the edited version on Thursday & link up to that, too! :) Hopefully I can save this picture!

Link your SOOC shot at Jill's Blog, here! On Thursday, link up your edited shot at Ashley's Blog, here!
Have a great rest of your night!! If you are a newcomer to my blog, thanks for stopping by!! :)