Photoshop Efforts

Ever since Sarah showed me a local photographer's blog : www.pearblossom.typepad.com I've been so jealous of the woman's style. She uses a photoshopping tool and does a great subtle but not subtle job with it in my opinion. Sarah was able to take advantage of a charity event where she had Micaiah take a 15 minute session with the photographer and two of his photos can be seen on her blog right now!

SO since we can't afford to use this photographer on a whim when it's not a charity event, Sarah and I have set about trying to find our own similar style with photoshop. The idea is to take not even all that perfect a picture and turn it into something special with photoshop.

Here is my first effort (highly lacking in layers and masking but they currently give me a headache):


A bit too glowy, but it's late and I don't want to tweak right now.

Only Sarah knows how different it is from the original...okay now all of you do... it doesn't look as impressive as I feel it is... See, the problem with showing you the original is that you can see just how fake the new version is. The great thing about this lady is that I know that she's manipulating the photo and I can basically tell how, but if I wanted not to think about it, I wouldn't - i.e. they look real enough to be real... in a super saturated sort of world or something.

Basically I still think the original artist is getting a clearer picture to begin with. I'm uncomfortable posting one of Micaiah because it's too easy to compare with the photographer, but remember this is just my first try (with the help of a tutoring session from Steve in which my brain threatened to explode)...

I actually think her little logo adds quite a bit - isn't that funny? I think that's my snobby side coming out.

And I should point out I'm not trying to make it look totally real. Some more than others. For example I'm working on one that is out of focus and I feel like you just have to take that over the edge or else is just looks... out of focus.