MomShots

An alternate title could be The Magic of Photoshop in Skilled Hands.

Remember this photo that we talked about a while ago?

Before:

After:

Magic? Yes!

My dear friend, Tye offered to fix the background for me. She used her White Photoshop Magic and made the background look so much better. She got rid of the car and now it looks like a photo I would like to print out and give to my sister in law as a gift.

Now my stance on photography is that we need to do as much “in camera” as possible. We need to try not to make mistakes like this that need to be fixed in Photoshop. But when we do make those mistakes, sometimes they can be repaired with a little help from Photoshop (and awesome friends who can make the fixes look amazing).

I am comfortable with my actions. I am comfortable with the mid-levels of PhotoShop that I know. I have learned so much since I started using the program and am MUCH more comfortable with it than I first was. I’m not totally intimidated by it anymore. I can let myself experiment and try new things.

But I am comfortable in the little rut I have gotten into.

Curves are an important and useful tool in regulating how your image looks. I have never really played with them. I didn’t really “get” it. I still don’t totally “get” it, but I am now inspired and excited to learn and eventually fully “get” it.

I found a great post by Mommy’s Camera in my RSS feed this morning about using curves. I tried it out and it turns out I’m not totally scared of them.

Yay me!

If you are like me and would like to understand Curves a bit better, check out her post and then pick a photo and go experiment.

This may not be the best example but it is one of the best ones from a little photo shoot yesterday. Here is a picture of Eva Marie (and the back of her adorable cousin Miles’ head, who happened to be born on the very same day!!!). It was a bit dark and I used curves to lighten it up. Ok, so it’s not a good example at all because I hardly did anything. I don’t even know if you’ll see the difference.

Original:

Curves adjusted to make slightly lighter and brighter.

Well, that’s all I’ve got today. Go check out the post on Mommy’s Camera about curves. She has a some great examples and gives some really great advice and thoughts about using curves. I really enjoyed it.

I have been following Kate from Chronicles of a Country Girl for a couple years, I think. She’s a very talented photographer and a really cool lady as well.

She recently posted a great tutorial for adding a texture to a photograph using PhotoShop. If you are interested in checking out her method, click here.

There is also another blog that I have recently started following. Jerry Jones, from Shadowhouse Creations is a wonderful resource for free and awesome textures. He makes and posts quite a few each week. They are free to use but if you do use one, be sure to use your manners and thank him.

Jerry recently posted a tutorial for applying and blending textures.

This photo is a true “MomShot” because it is of me, the mom. It is from this past summer right before I got pregnant. I had finally reached a point in my weightloss where I felt comfortable tucking in my shirt. I’m excited to have this baby and start working on that again!

Anyway, insecurities aside, I followed Jerry’s tutorial for applying and blending textures. I did not always use the exact textures he used but chose ones that closely resembled his choices. It’s a fun thing to try and I’m very excited to experiment and develop a better trained eye at this.

The new Tip of the Week is up. Please look it over and reply. Tye wants to customize her Tips for you and this is your chance to make that happen. I know how much you all love the Tips. Please reply so she can make them even more awesome!!!

On a similar note, I found out that if you are currently running Photoshop Elements you can upgrade to their new full blown Photoshop CS4 for the incredible price of only $299. That’s a SCREAMING deal!!! If you are interested in this just click here.

I know many of you have mentioned interest in upgrading. If you can budget that price in you will not be disappointed by how awesome CS4 is!

Greetings all—my name is Anna, and I’m a mother and photographer blogging at HankandWillie. I’m delighted to be invited by Jessica to contribute the occasional post here at Momshots!

Photo day for Hank & Willie and a friend. Weather was below freezing and children were miserable. Note chocolate-bar-as-bribe in my hand, bottom left. Note also that it is not having desired effect.

So folks, it’s December. I have no idea how that happened, but here’s another bulletin—Christmas is THREE WEEKS from tomorrow. Never mind the shopping, have you done your holiday cards yet?

That’s a superhero face, in case you aren’t fluent in the expressions of four-year-old boys. Also not using this one.

For us moms who love pictures, this is our SuperBowl. I’m still figuring out which image to use for ours—and believe me, these boys didn’t give us many choices—and what it’s going to look like—make my own? Use one of the designs at the excellent design and printing companies out there, like Posh Peacock, Tiny Prints, Moo? Try the new and improved offerings at the photo-sharing sites like Smug Mug, Shutterfly and Snapfish?

Looking for ideas on making your card uniquely yours?  Try these nine fantastic tips for making your own creative photo cards at Martha Stewart, or head to ShutterSisters and read their great series, Great Greetings!, on taking better photos and sharing great ideas about holiday cards. And for further inspiration, check out their Flickr pool for finished holiday cards and photos. Where else have you discovered great resources for making, designing and printing holiday cards? Share it in the comments below!

And if you’ve got your photo, but it needs a little something before you create your final card? As my gift to MomShots readers, I would be happy to try a little Photoshop magic on your photo this year.  So far this year for friends’ photos I have:

A) Swapped heads on a lovely family for optimum smileage

B) Removed a silver picture frame embedded in the head of a handsome preschooler

C) Done basic contrast/curves boost and color boost (Falls under the category of “make it better and brighter!”

D) Done black and white conversions

E) Done vintage and faded conversions

If you think you need help with one of those areas and if you think I might be able to make your photo look better than it already is, send me your original, unedited high-resolution file.

But remember, pictures that tell the story of your family don’t have to be perfect to be great!

The fine print

Send me your photo at hankandwillieATgmail.com by 12/8 and make sure you put Hank & Willie/MomShots in the subject line. And, if you send me a photo, it is fair game to post the before and after on H&W and here at MomShots, but I won’t use names if you don’t want them published. If I get too many to work on, I will select a random few—it is just three weeks before Christmas, after all, and my Christmas card isn’t going to make itself!

So I’m basically stealing this post idea from Pioneer Woman.  If you haven’t checked her out yet, she’s great.  I read this recent post and got inspired to try my own hand at painting with the Photoshop Artistic effects.  I took a photo of this flower, a delphinium I believe, growing in my mom’s lush and beautiful garden in July of this year.  My mother is a woman of many, many talents and one of those many talents is to grow beautiful things - not just flowers.  

So I thought I’d try the watercolor effect.  I’ve always dreamed of being able to paint but I haven’t yet been able to train my hands to cooperate, so in the mean time, I’ll experiment with manipulating photos.  Besides, I think it might help me be a bit more familiar with Photoshop if I’m actually practicing things.

So here is the before:

Here is the after:

My original photo had some out of focus areas - I used a pretty large aperture (f/3.3) so the background is blurred but so is part of the flower.  I think the blurred areas actually help the watercolor to look better.  I think it would look really cool printed on knobby, thick watercolor paper and then attached to a greeting card.  In fact, I am toying with the idea of setting a goal to make a set of greeting cards.  I think that might be a really fun project.

So, back to photographing children…  You could totally do this with photos of your kids or anything that you would like to see like that.  Studios charge lots of money for prints that just have this simple effect on them.  Who needs those stinking studios, anyway?!?  OK, maybe we do, but not today!

I would love to see any photos that you have played with and added an artistic effect.  Post them to the Momshots Flickr Group.  It will be fun to see what you’ve done!