Fix-it Friday #52

Here is my play for the week.

Basically, I removed some items out of the background using the clone tool. Then I ran the Midnight Color action on it, added a grunge border and that was it.

Here is the original:

Here is my edited version:

I hope you like my changes…

John

I Heart Faces #51

This weeks photo was a bit more of a challenge and I had to take a shot at it. The photo shows a lovely young lady in a winter setting. You will notice in the original that she has some contrasty light on her face showing some darkness around the eyes and some really bright spots on her cheeks and nose. Also notice that the focus is a touch soft on her eyes.

Here is the original:

I decided to do a few things to start. First, I did a little color correction, which is always where I start with a photo. Then, I gave her back her missing top teeth, which I pretty much did just for my own purposes to see how I could blend replacements back in (I thought the teeth came out nice so I left them in). Then, I used the patch tool to correct some of the bright spots on her cheeks. Now the photo was set for me to really play. I took the ContraSoft action from EZ Actions and used it to pop the color, soften her skin, highlight the eyes, and darken the background. This resulted in a nice photo, but I wanted a little more sharpening in the eyes and a little more color pop. So, I ran the Sharp Shot Color Pop Pro action. This really popped the color to my liking and added the right amount of sharpness to her eyes. I used the layer masks to tone down the contrast that the action added and removed some sharpening from her face and hair.

Here is what I ended up with:

I hope you like the result…

Thanks for stopping by,
John

Photo Contest

Did you know?

We’ve taken an interest in horseback riding over the past 2 years. Part of our interest has spurred on a new web site called NickerTown. We enjoy sharing information about horses, including some tips on taking photos of horses (so check them out when you get a chance). Also, part of the site includes a Photo Contest. We love to see different types of photos, including portraits, photos of the country life style, barns, tack, flowers, pets, and horses. We award monthly prizes for the contest and will be picking a “photo of the year” which will receive a special prize.  We wanted to share this info and hope to see you participate in the contest.

Thanks for stopping by!
John

PS – The software that we use to host the photo contest requires that you name your photo (change the file name) if you want a nice caption. The software uses the file name as the caption. If you participate in the contest and include the letters EZ either at the front or the end of your photo AND your photo is chosen as a finalist, we’ll include a special prize from EZ Actions… If your photo is selected as the Grand Prize winner and has the EZ in the caption, we’ll make that prize a PhotoBlast All Pro action pack (worth $150) in addition to the normal Grand Prize.

I Heart Faces #50

Wow, another week has come and gone. I took a few minutes to play on I Heart Faces again this week.

Here is the original photo:

I did a little levels adjustment and some color correction. I then cropped the photo and ran the EZ Actions ContraSoft action. I added the border and then flattened the photo. I selected the newly created image and then imported back onto the cropped original which I had blurred. Here was the result:
 

I think it came out nice and I hope you enjoy my version.

Thanks,
John

Fix it Friday #49

I haven’t had the chance to play with the I Heart Faces group in a while, so I thought I’d give it a shot today. I had a few minutes (literally spent about 10 minutes) to play and this is what I came up with.

Here is the original photo

I took the original above and did a quick color correction. After the color correction, I ran the ContraSoft action from EZ Actions on the photo. This allowed me to soften the skin a bit and then use the paint with light functionality to darken the background a touch. I also wanted to give the photo a very slight touch of an antique feel, so I ran the ContraSoft version with the Rustic Charm action. I then merged the 2 versions together placing the Rustic Charm version on top of the ContraSoft version and decreased the opacity to 45%.  This was the result:

Finally, I took the photo above and ran a black and white conversion on it. I used the Pro Sepia action and called it quits… Here is the result showing the Sepia version:

I hope you enjoy my versions of a wonderful photo.

Thanks,

John