NKM photos: techniques

Showing posts with label techniques. Show all posts

Preserving Memories

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Nick is doing a Family Heritage school project and he asked his Grandma for old family names and pictures for his Family Tree. She was able to come up with some great photos, but like all really old family photos, some of them are in not so great shape.

Well, it just so happens that I was checking out my friend Janine Smith's new Photo Restoration with Photoshop course on Lynda.com. Perfect! That was just what I needed.

Here's a before and after of my first processed photo. I picked one of the less damaged ones; it had some stains, creases, a small tear and lots of little spots. I was able to pick up tons of great tips on how to deal with just about every damage you can encounter on a photograph. Even if you don't have really old photos which require restoration, this course can just as easily be applied to everyday fixes, such as glare from glasses, unwanted objects in the background, color corrections, and...and...and... I could go on and on, but just go and check it out, you will love it. Check out Janine's website, Landailyn for a whole gallery of her amazing restoration work.
Ok, here it is. I think it looks pretty good.

The before and after template is from paint the moon photography (I think it was a facebook freebie)

My very Professional (not!) photo shoot and final picture How-To

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I haven't had much opportunity to use the new tripod, so yesterday I decided to use the potted Campanula Get Mee's (ok, I didn't know this, I read the label) I picked up at the store last week and take some close-ups.

I love this texture tutorial at the Flypaper Textures site and wanted to see if I can get similar results using my own textures. Well, I didn't really have any of my own textures yet; I just started creating my own and the few I have were more of the darker/grungy variety, so they wouldn't work for this light, dreamy type of look.

Well, not to worry, being the Packrat that I am, which, in photography, translates into my having a hard time rejecting and deleting any bad or blurry shots without thinking "hmmm, if I just use this corner of the picture, I can get some cool background/texture, etc. which I can then use for something else", I had just that--some really nice, dreamy, blurry, colorful parts of otherwise less than optimal (i.e. crappy) shots.
This is what the finished picture looks like.

If you'd like to know how I did it, read on:

Spring is here - I hope

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Finally, the days where we get (almost) up to the weather we're supposed to be having this time of year, are getting more frequent. Today is actually the second day in a row we can go outside without a jacket on!! Time to clean the yard and garage--but that's another post.

So, last week we had another such day (imagine that!), so we took the opportunity of a couple of hours before picking the kids up from school and went to the capitol in search of some photo ops. Oh, and to try out the new tripods (and heads) we got. We managed to get a few decent shots of the capitol and surrounding area. It was still a little early to get any flowers and I'm not sure they'll be having to many this year given the budget issues.
The picture I'm showing below is a combination of two shots I took; one of them had a better DOF for the background and the other had more of the ledge in focus. I did some basic adjustments in LightRoom and then moved on to Photoshop, where I used a combination of Actions.
I started off with Boost, from the (free) Pioneer Woman Action Set 1 (I seem to always start with that one :D). Then, I used the (also free--yay) Mini Fusion Action from MCP and adjusted the various settings, like contrast, warm tint and then I lightened it a bit.
Then, to bring out the leaf and petal colors on the ledge, I used MCP's Fingerpaint action from the Quickie Collection. Lastly, I added the Dusty vignette from MCP's All in the Details set. And finally, finished it off with the BuildIt Rounded Color Block from MCP's Finish It set. Hmm, can you tell I use a lot of MCP actions? Here is the finished picture.

Grunge Mix - Vintage

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Grunge Mix - Vintage, a photo by scrapgeek/NKMphotos on Flickr.

I spent some time today going through different tutorials for creating textures. One great one I found was Evolution of a Texture. I followed most of the instructions and interpreted others for my own use. I like the way they came out. This article definitely gave me ideas and I can't wait to try out other techniques. I made 5 textures in different shades, all are available to download on my flickr page.