Reflection

I didn't give this week's topic at iheartfaces.com much thought until about a week ago. This week's theme is reflection. And, of course, it has to be a reflection of a face, because it is iheartfaces. I couldn't use a picture of a reflection of a bridge, for instance. I didn't think putting up another version of last week's self-portrait with kids would be a very interesting post. I was stumped.

But, at dinner tonight, my toddler discovered her reflection in the pot at the family dinner table. I grabbed my camera and took a picture of her looking at herself. Do you remember gazing at yourself in shiny curved objects like pots and spoons and such and being mesmorized when you were a kid? Well, I do. So, here is my picture of my littlest girl fascinated by her own reflection.

Photoshop Sharpen

I managed to eeek out a decent picture with this one.

The original is below in the first picture. It's a little too blurry - especially in the face and the feet, because the little guy was moving and I was using existing light coming in through a window. You can really see it if you click on the image and go to the bigger image.

Here is my Photoshop alteration. First I changed Camera Raw settings - upping the black, upping the contrast, upping the intensity and then adjusting the exposure to match. Then I converted it to black and white using my baby blown out method for black and whites making my solid color adjustment layer just about 20%. As usual, I adjusted curves using an S-curve and adjusted levels to my liking. I applied an unsharp mask to the picture to my liking. Then, after merging my layers, I duplicated my layer and made a layer just for sharpening the eyes a tad more. Last, I added a bit of sepia type color to the photo by going to Photo Filter and choosing a color (in this case mine was a deep brown) and adjusting the density to my liking.

Below is the new photo. If you click on it and choose the larger sized photo, you will see that it still looks pleasing even blown up.

You Capture Challenge - Letters

I am participating in this weeks You Capture's Challenge - Letters.

Here is a favorite picture of mine with some wonderful letters in it.

Fix It Friday - Baby Picture

I Heart Faces is featuring a cute little baby picture to fix with Photoshop for Fix It Friday.

Here is the original:

Here is my first fix - a sharpened up color version:

Here is my second fix - a mostly black and white version, with a touch of color and a blue tint.

Here is my third fix - a black and white conversion with a blown out look. I just love the blown out look with babies. You can read about how I do this here.

Grass In Motion

I really liked these photos for some reason - especially the first one - it speaks motion to me, not just blur.

Second Self-Portrait With Kids

Well, I could only have one kids self-portrait entry for iheartfaces. But, here is the second picture I took. This one is of my other daughter. Her eyes to me, are so striking. Always. My other daughter, in the background, adds drama to the picture I think with her sad face. It's amazing how sad kids get when it's the other one's turn at something - even though they just had their turn. At least they are honest with their feelings.

I Heart Faces - Self Portrait

Here are my entries for this week's i heart faces - pretty challenging considering I broke my wrist a little over a month ago and we weren't allowed to use a tripod. But, I was inspired by everyone's creativity with this topic. And, I think I had a little creativity myself.

Here is my adult entry:

Here is my kids entry - my daughter and I (and another daughter there in the background):

Easy Photoshop Texture Tutorial

I've actually just recently learned a technique for using textures with my photos. Here is an easy (I hope) tutorial for adding textures to your photos.

I'll start with two photographs - one, the picture I want to showcase, and the other, the texture. Here they are:

The cow photo - I wanted to showcase

Texture photo

For your texture photo you can take a close-up picture of most anything. Here in this blog entry I used a tree for the texture. Paper, wood, rocks, anything repetitive make good textures. Or, you can get a texture from the web from a site like Mayang's Textures.

I took the texture photo and tweaked the levels, the contrast, and the curves of my texture and then desaturated it until it looked like this:

My original photo looked too saturated and didn't have enough contrast (detail) to make a good texture when combined with my photo, so I changed it. You may or may not want to alter your texture. That's up to you.

So, I take my original photo and duplicate the background layer. I make sure my texture photo is the same size as the photo that I want to add texture to. In this case they are both 600 px by 400 px. Making sure than my image is flattened (all one layer), I Select-All (CTRL-A) and Copy (CTRL-C) my texture photo. I go over to my original photo and I Paste (CTRL-V). This will create a third layer on my original photo. The first two layers are the original photo (the cow), the third layer is the texture.

I make sure the texture layer is on top. I RIGHT-CLICK with my mouse on the texture layer and choose BLENDING OPTIONS (the second option in the pull down menu). In the main screen under BLENDING OPTIONS there is a header that says GENERAL BLENDING. Blend Mode. Click on the arrow after Blend Mode and you will get a pull down menu where you can choose the option OVERLAY. Click on Overlay. This creates the texture. You can adjust the opacity of this to your liking using the opacity slider in the main screen of the BLENDING OPTIONS box.

At this point if you look at your image, the whole image has the texture on it. In most cases, this is probably not what you want. You want your subject to be sharp and not to have a texture on top of it. This is why I made an extra copy of the original photo (the cow). Now you will want to make sure that the EYE to the left of the layer is off for the bottom layer and on for the top two layers. This makes one of your original photos non visible. Go to the pull down menus and choose Layer >> Merge Visible. This will give you two layers now - the newly merged textured photo (of the cows with the texture in it) and the original. At this point, you will turn the visibility (click on the square next to the layer to make the EYE appear) to your original layer.

Now move the original photo to the top layer. Click on the layer thumbnail of the original photo, then ALT-ADD VECTOR MASK (Alt-the rectangle with the circle in it). This will create a mask on this layer and make the layer disappear on the main image. Now you will color in the part you want from the original (the non-textured picture) with a white paintbrush. The original photo will show through the photo. This is the same technique you use to sharpen just eyes in a photo (which I learned from iheartfaces.com). Here is a screen shot from this point in the process.

Once you have the effect you like, you can merge your remaining layers and do a final sharpen if necessary on your final photo (unsharp mask). I tried to be thorough, yet simple in writing this tutorial, but if you have any questions or suggestions about this technique, just ask.

Here's a final image:

Fix It Friday - Original, Black & White Fix, Color Fix, Texture

Here are my fixes for iheartfaces.com's Fix-It-Friday.

Here is the original:

Here is my Black & White fix:

Here is my Color fix:

Here is one with Texture and a Vignette:

Iheartfaces Spring Entry

Here is my photo for this week's iheartfaces, amateurs category. The theme is Spring. I love the contrast of this little outfit on my youngest daughter. This was a bright sunny day at the park. My kids were thoroughly enjoying themselves.