In the Work Shop

Along with my new rockin' camera (Canon Rebel XSi) that I got for Christmas, my ol' man got me a photo editing software- Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo x2. It's much like the well known Adobe Photoshop, but without the hefty price tag. I don't know what the $500 Adobe has, but I've been able to try out the $100 one as well as the Corel version which I think has an advantage to the cheaper Adobe package. I've been working on both to see what I can and can't do and although I'm impressed by Adobe's depth, it's also obvious that there are some gaps in the tools, etc. So I did some tutorials on an effect that I think is pretty striking (at least in wedding photos that I've seen) and I need to practice since my photo shoot with Terri is still drawing near and I don't want to disappoint! My brother got me started on some tutorials- actually the one he sent me is a lettering one that's actually pretty advanced and I'm still working on it.. it just doesn't look quite right. However, after watching a few tutorials on color selection I tried my hand at the trick. I'm pretty happy with the effect I was able to replicate. And the cool thing is, once I did one, something clicked in my mind and I kind of got the understanding how to do other effects that I recall from pictures in my wedding photo album!

This one was my first attempt. I made it black and white, then pulled out the onsie to keep it's color. I then decided that I wanted to try to just paint in Riley's eyes and make them blue (which they are blue but I intensified the color)




This one I started from a black and white photo. Since it started b&w, I had to add color. It was a little more complicated than I anticipated. I had to do each eye separately because when I tried to do them together on a layer, it looked really unnatural since his left eye is more shadowed than the right. I basically created a painting on a separate layer and then adjusted the opacity until it looked okay.




This one was a little trickier. I did two separate effects.. Obviously I pulled out the red in the roses. I chose to only highlight the three by the faces because I had the forth one done and it just didn't look good. I also adjusted the depth of field so there is a blur in the background and the faces are clear!



This is what I was talking about with the revelation that I had. It may seem simple to everyone else, but I tried to do something like this before and failed miserably. I don't' know if you can tell, but everything is kind of with a wind blown effect of sorts and then I knocked out a couple spots that I didn't want the distortion to be present. I still need to work on this one a little, but I understand the concept which is the first step!


Now I've got to get off... My husband just tackled me to the ground and reminded me that it's March in Phoenix with beautiful 80 degree weather... I should be outside enjoying it!!!