I LOVE football, and right now, Kurt Warner is playing in the playoffs with his team, the Arizona Cardinals. We used to watch them all the time when we lived in Arizona…
Anyway, I am listening to it, but I’m totally hooked right now on this whole Photoshop thing. It’s kind of like a toy for me. I know I just posted the virtues of Photoshop Elements and I will post some very very very easy ways to enhance your photos using that. Right now, though, I just taught myself a couple of cool things using Photoshop, so I’m passing it on to you…all three of you.
Here’s a photo of the girl at her first equestrian meet. I was so proud and confused that day. Anyway, I must have done something to this photo earlier because the colors are so bright and beautiful. Or maybe I’m just a good photographer…nah. Ok. I thought this photo might look really good if it had a sort of vintage look to it. I have some vintage actions and black and white actions but I thought I’d play around to see if I can come up with something similar, on my own, because it’s fun.
This is the result and I think it’s pretty good actually, pat on my own shoulders please. It would look even more vintage with some graining, but I don’t know how to do that yet.
The first thing I do after I open up the picture in PS is to make a duplicate layer, because I’m so afraid of messing up. That way I can just discard the messed up layers and just have the original layer.
If you look closely at the right hand corner you will see that I made a duplicate layer by hitting Ctrl J on my PC. I don’t know what it is on a Mac, sorry.
I then clicked on the little eye to not show the background layer, only the duplicated layer. I make sure that I click on the duplicated layer to highlight it so that I know what layer I’m working on.
I should have zoomed in, I’m sorry again. I apologize a lot. I did in the later shots. Anyway, I have a ton of great black and white actions but here’s to doing it on your own. There’s a little circle, half black and half white on the bottom of the layers dialogue box that is open. Do you see? You have to squint. When you click on it you will see some options. Click on Gradient Map…
This will turn your picture into a black and white photo and will create another layer in your layer palette as you can see. I finally zoomed in, hallelujah.
Now go to tools on your left side of the screen. Click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool.
Then drag your cursor until you are about an inch or so from the sides of the picture. You can sort of see it on the above picture. It’s a dotted square…once again, I should have zoomed in.
At this point I do something else that is just me, I think. I click on both the layers using the shift key to select them. Then I got to the Layers tab and click on Merge Layers, or Ctrl E if you like. It just assures me that I’m on the right layer and I can move on. It’s kind of like flattening the layers but I don’t include the original background because I want to keep it well…original.
So now I right click on the picture and select “Feather”. This will help to blend the darks and lights in the layers a little better. When the little Feather dialogue box opens up, I type in 75 for the value, for no other reason than because I read it somewhere.
Then I right click again on the picture and click on “Select Inverse”. This will select the outside of the rectangular box, not the inside.
I don’t have a picture of this (not that it will help anyway) I right click again and select Layer via Copy. This will make another layer of just the selected area in your layer palette
With the newest layer selected or highlighted, go to the Layers tab on the layer palette and click little arrow on the drop down box and select Linear Dodge.
You’ll see the area selected turn very light. I like it. I tried all the selections by the way.
I like black and whites with some contrast, I think they look like of washed out if they don’t. Of course, I’m trying to make this picture look like it was taken in 1920. Anyway I bump up the contrast by hitting Ctrl M on my keyboard.
This brings up the Curves box. This box controls contrast. I drag the line around until I like the look. I think it’s based on what your aesthetics are, no right answer here.
Lastly, I click on the Filter tab and find the Gaussian Blur. Make sure the very last layer is still selected before you click on this. This blends the last layer in very well. The radius selection should be 250 by the way.
I turned this…
into this…
Whew, I’m going to check the score and cook dinner now…I’ve played enough for today I think…
