Before and afters (extra post)

So I wanted to show the before and afters of what happened for the slide show.
---Jenn

There is no before picture for the first or last slide as they are created by me using a blank file and things from PS Elements.

Mom and Dad before. Scanned from my scrapbook

Photo story slide show

Here is my photo story, I shared it with my mom and dad and they loved it and want a copy. I want to figure out how to make them a copy on DVD and add music to it. I think if I added more pics to it, it'd make a great 35 year anniversary present. Hope you enjoy, if you click on the slide show it brings you to the picassa album so if you'd like to see more detail in the pics. ----Jenn

Portraits

So here we are in the home stretch for classes! I can't believe how fast this semester has gone. So I took pics of my favorite subjects this week, my sons. I tried to use some of the different techniques when taking their pictures. It was strange shooting from different angles, I tend to end up with deer in the headlights portraits since I take them from the front.

This is my oldest Arthur, he tends to take really bad pictures when he's paying attention, he has a really fake smile/grimace at times. So for his picture I just sat beside him on the floor and took a picture once he was engrossed in his game. I like how he is so relaxed in this pic.

This is Joe, he hates having his picture taken, much prefers the other side of the camera. I think I like this one because he actually let me take a pic of him he just wouldn't look at me, he usually hides under a table or behind his hands.

This is Harvey and I love the look on his face, and the angle of shooting downwards, He was so confused by why I was standing on the bucket, lol.

So this last picture is Harvey as well, and I was trying to get a picture of him from below and he was so silly, he was like "here with my spoon" :-) so I ended up with the angle and focused on a piece of his body that you wouldn't normally.

Week 10 ----more photoshop tools

So this week I had a hard time with using the paintbrush tool, it took we 3 or 4 different photos until I felt like I could be proud of what I did with it, so when it finally clicked that was my ah-ha moment.

Clone and Patch tools

So this is my lovely Aunt Johnnie Lee who is a very sweet southern lady, who is usually very prim and proper. Which is what made this picture so funny, I'm in the red shirt (very pregnant) trying not to pee my pants from laughing so hard.

I have always loved the pictures she shares but I hate that her camera leaves the date on them, so I used the patch tool to remove the date and time, and then used the clone tool to try and fix the table clothe. I am not pleased with the way the clothe came out, it'll take more practice to get good enough with these tools to duplicate a pattern like the flowers.

Adding Text

This is my son Harvey and my cousin Asa (who is an amazing photographer with an artist's eye). They were hanging out and Asa told Harv it was time to go in, he was less than impressed. I thought this picture just screamed for text.

So another ah-ha moment was figuring out what keys to press to create the copyright symbol on my photos. I followed the tutorial and added the copyright to the bottom left and then added text to the picture, I think this will come in handy when I'm scrapbooking since I often find that I don't like the way pages turn out when you have to add the captions on a page. I think adding them to the pictures themselves will make my pages look a lot more cohesive.

Painting

So this is Harvey again, he loves pretending to be a cowboy and struts around in his boots and hat daily.I love the look on his face but again hated the clutter that is home.

So I lifted him out using the lasso tool, and put him on a fitting background, I darkened his pupils to get rid of a bit of eye shine using the paint brush, colored his lips a bit, and made his hat black and changed his coat using paint. I like it ok, but I need to go back in and add some highlights with the dodge and burn tools. It reminds me of the pictures of my aunts from the 50's that look more like they were paintings.

So this is a shot of the leaves in the fall of 2009, when we were trying to figure out what to do for invitations for my brother's wedding. I was trying to show how pretty the orange leaves were but when I saw the finished picture realized that it highlighted the death of the leaves where the edges were turning brown. I had to do a few different things to get this picture to the point where I really liked the finished product.

This was done using the impressionist brush and just going over the whole thing a few times with different layers of varying degrees of opacity. I liked it but felt it had no depth, so I continued on.

So to get the final result I used the eyedropper to capture the color of the branches, and then went over all the branches to highlight them. I had to use a few different thicknesses of brushes to get them all, but I really like the finished product, I think it has an almost 3D feel to it.