Christmas photos and crafts

javascript:void(0)

We had a great Christmas and are still enjoying our break  - trying to do something fun everyday.

The children are delighted with their presents and so are the adults. I did buy an early present for me: RadLab, which is a photoshop plugin and very handy to edit photos.My long term aim is to take photos which need little editing, but RadLab is fun to use and can add a little something for an otherwise boring photo.

Take the photo of my son above. He was decorating a small artificial tree which was going to go in his bedroom. That how it looks in real life, taken at night with a flash.

I set the camera in manual mode, exposed for the lights. It looks a little better now.

I then cleaned a bit of the wire and played with RadLab to add a bit of glow to the photo.

I have been crafting and taking photographs, but ironically I haven't taken anIy photos of my crafty projects. I use pinterest to mark interesting things I find in the web; it a great way to have a visual catalog of them. I compiled a few Christmas projects, I'll get some photos taken but in case you want save them for next here, here are the original photos and source:

Source: homemade-gifts-made-easy.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: homemade-gifts-made-easy.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Both are relatively easy to make. The second one would be suitable for an older child. Great way to use paper scraps.

Source: blog.maggiemakes.com via Elisa on Pinterest

This is more time consuming, but the result is beautiful.

Source: alittledelightful.blogspot.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Made with my children and one of their friends. We used cookie cutters to make the shapes and let them colour them with markers. We didn't have much time so I let them colour before baking them. To my surprise the colours remained vivid after baking.

Curves...

This post is dedicated to Lainey, who is a fabulous photographer and just started using the curves tool.

Do you know these beautiful photo effects that you can get using actions? Like getting a modern, greenish tinge or a faded rosy look?

The good news is that you don't need actions.
The bad news is that PSE is not good enough, you need (the very expensive) Photoshop. Or the (quite cheap) PSP a.k.a. PaintShop Pro. Or (the free) GIMP.

You can find about everything in the web, the only thing you need is to find the right words feed Google. Since it took me a while, I'll save you the bother and give you the links straight away:

SOOC (original photo, straight out of the camera)



Cross processing simulation:



Another one:


And the faded, vintage look:




Both tutorials are for Photoshop, but just find the curves tool and you can easily repeat the steps in PSP.

Start with the faded vintage, which is the quickest one to get the hang of it.
I only discovered how to do this today and am in love with it, expect lots of vintage looking photos in my scrapbook layouts from now on. :-)

This is how to get the look for the first photo. It gives great results for both b&w and colour photos.

I can't find the tutorial on how to repeat the 2nd photo, but it is similar to the one above. The red and green channels should look the same, but the blue one should look like an inverted "S".

A texture tutorial

When I posted my Butterfly layout, I got a couple of inquiries on how I merged Kirsty's texture to the photo, so here's a tutorial, I hope it helps.

1. Start PSE and open your photo and Kirsty's page.
2. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select the texture from Kirsty's page.

When I posted my Butterfly layout in the SC gallery, I got a couple of inquiries on how I added the texture to the photos, so I made a quick tutorial, I hope it helps.


3. Press Ctrl-c to copy the selection. Copy the selection into your photo (Ctrl-v)



4. As the texture is not big enough to cover the photo, copy the texture again and use the move tool to cover the missing area.


5. In the layer pallete, right click on the top layer and select Merge Down.



6. Now the fun bit, see where it says Normal in the layers palette? Open the drop down menu and select Overlay.


7. Move the opacity slider (I used 30% here).


8. Use the eraser tool to remove the texture from face, arms and legs.


I hope it helps, thanks for asking.

Textures are big, many photographers are adicted to it, here's the article that started for me.

Tutorial - Special Effects with PSE

This is tutorial for yesterday's post. I used PSE6, a photo, and a texture. For this tutorial, I used a digital paper by Jessica Sprague.

1) Open your picture.


2) Make your photo black and white.
On the layers pallete on the bottom right side of the window, you will see a half-white/half-back circle. Click it and choose "Threshold...". You will see a histogram and a little white arrow at the bottom. Move it to the right or left until you are happy with what you see. Click OK.



3) Clean your image (optional step)
Do you see all these white bits in the background? I am going to get rid of them:
In the layers pallete, select the Threshould layer, right click on it and select "Merge down".
Set the background colour to black. (If your background is mostly white, set the foreground colour to white.) Select the paintbrush tool
paint all the undesired bits.


4) Open your texture file.

5)Copy texture file into your picture:
See the little icon with the texture file in the layers pallete? Drag it to your picture.
This should cover your picture completely, if it doesn't move it or resize it until it does.


6)The final step
In the layers pallete, make sure that the texture layer is selected. See the little drop down menu in the layers pallete, saying "Normal". Change it to "Screen" That's it. Done!


The final final picture:



OK, I made another change. I didn't like the texture on the eyes, and lips, so I painted these bits dark red in the texture layer.

About the picture: It works better with photos where the background is reasonably plain and where there is a good contrast between the subject and the background. Dark background will turn into a final picture with mostly texture. A light coloured background will make a picture like the ones I posted yesterday.

About the texture: Can be a photo or a digital paper. Because the texture is going to replace the darkest parts of the picture, it works better is the texture is darkish.

PSE experiments

Everytime I went to Tesco's, I saw a big poster featuring Cristiano Ronaldo (footballer - Portuguese squad & ManU) advertising Portuguese golf courses. His photo had an interesting effect, his face merged with some landscape photography and last week I thought - I can do it too.

This is my attempt with two photos of my kids playing in the beach.




After I finished, I went looking for the original photo in the web and found it here, you will have to download the PDF to see Cristiano, but you can have an idea looking at the cover. That's when I discovered that the photos are much more sophisticated than mine, blending texture and the black&white photo. I might have another go later but I am happy with the results I've got. I'll try to print it and if it looks good, I'll frame them.

The pattern in the photo is a from a texture gallery, this one taken by Andronicus Riyono.

It is really easy to do, I'll write a step-by-step another day, gotta go to bed now. Night night.

Photo Editing II

This is not exactly photo editing but it is something I have been playing with since I did the altered canvas.

Sometimes there are photos that I like but that are a bit boring, or the colours are a bit off, or a bit blurry. If no amount of photo editing seem to improve a photo there is always the alternative to try to get an interesting result using filters. You need to experiment with the parameters until you get a pleasing result but it is really great fun and the results are worth it.

In PSE, you can find the Filters by clicking on Filters->Filter Gallery or, on the right hand side of the screen, under Artworks and Effects, choose filter in the first drop down menu, and artistic on the second.

Here's some before&after pics:


Watercolour Filter, parameters set to 10/2/2.



Coloured pencil, parameters set to 2/12/25. My favourite filter and one of the few ones that work well with portraits too.


Poster Edges filter, parameters set to 4/3/3. Very subtle change, but somehow it improves the photos by 100%.

Photo Editing I

I am by no means an expert, but there are always beginners around, so I decided to post some easy tips on how to improve your photos. Nothing complicated, only one-or-two step mini-tutorials.

There are often several ways on how to correct a certain problem, I'll show you my favourite way in Photoshop Elements 5 (aka PSE5) and/or PaintShopProXI (aka PSP XI).

Tutorial 1: How to correct colour cast in PSE5

I am not sure what is the correct definition of colour cast, but you know when the photo has a yellowish or bluish look, that's colour cast. I often get the yellowish tinge when I take a photo at night. This is technique that works if the photo has shows something that should be white.

Here's the before & after.



In PSE, go to Enhance -> Adjust Lighting -> Levels...



Click on the white dropper - the one in the right hand side - and then go to your picture and click on a point which should be white. I choose the sunlight bit on the door. That is it!

If you click on the wrong spot, you might end up with really weird colours, just click on "Reset" and try again.

PSP: Levels in PSP XI works the same way, with a slight better user interface. Go to Adjust -> Brightness and Contrast -> Levels... Another option is to try Adjust->Colour Balance.

Levels is a great tool, I will go back to it sometime.