Missing Person

As happens so frequently in old photographs, someone ends up getting something cut off, heads. limbs and legs were all subject to photographic eradication. In this photo a complete person was chopped off from the picture.




I have been working with scanning slides in of the family and noticed the rest of the above missing person in another photograph and decided to return her to the family shot she was cropped out of.

I selected and copied her into the correct spot and then had to blend in her skirt and top. I also copied her arm, flipped it horizontally and inserted it back into the correct position. After a little blending and color corection it was done. We now have a complete family photograph!

So Serious

When I looked closer at the original photo I realized I liked the look on Lilly's face and decided to do a close up of just her.


I selected an oval portion of the photo and copied into a new document. Using the magnetic lasso I traced the area of her uncles shirt behind her. Once I had it all included I applied a gaussian blur. With a little clean up this was my result.

Roses

Spring is here in the south and my rose bushes are well on their way to supplying me with batches of beautiful blooms once again. This is one of last years blossoms gussied up.

I used the Nik Efex foilage filter and then the polaroid filter.

Another Composite

A friend asked me to if there was anything I could do with two photos that she had taken of her boys. She had set them in the sun when she took the photo so it took a bit of fooling to bring the color back to their sweet faces but I rather like the results once complete. I ran the Photoshop water color filter on them once completed. I think most of her relatives now have a copy of this picture.

Glass Globes

From the book Creative Photoshop Lighting Techniques by Barry Huggins I learned how to create the floating bubble below. The ocean photo is one that I already had taken and I borrowed the fish from a photo on line. Once I had finished the art I decided to try one for myself.

I looked for a base to water globe on line and removed the existing globe. I created the new globe, inserting a wedding photo that I had taken. I built the image over a photo of the wedding cake table instead of the ocean picture from the previous version.

Composite Photography

Photography shops love to sell parents and grandparents combined photographs. This was very popular while I was growing up and very easy to achieve with a little effort. I took the following 4 photgraphs and combined them in a classic style.

After selecting the portions of the images I wanted and copy and pasting them into a new file I began playing with the composition. I increased the size of some and decreased others. After getting the arangement I found pleasing I used the high key filter and then selectively applied the vignette blur, painting it in around each headshot. I finally used the vignette blur, placing the center on the largest picture and allowing the remainder of shots to be slightly blurred.

Sun Glasses

In one of my many photoshop books it explained how to make a high contrast black and white photo. This is one of my favorites and sits on my desk at work. I started with this photo taken on vacation.

I cropped it from horizontal to vertical and zoomed in on his face. I removed all of the background noise and substituted a black background. Working in layers, I switched the mode to black and white and increased the contrast on one layer decreased it on another. After erasing from one layer to show the one underneath I ended up with this photo.

50th Anniversary

Mom and Dad celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2006. I took this last photo of them together and it desperately needed help.

My camera settings were way off, mom and dad were too far apart because of his wheelchair and I wanted to be able to flatter them both with this photo. After adjusting the color and contrast I removed mom from where she was sitting and moved her over closer to dad. At the time I did not have the Nik Efexs filters so I softened her face by copying into another layer her entire face, adding gausian blur and reducing the opacity. I removed marks from where dad had bumped his head and softened him a bit too. With them cuddled up closer together I was able to crop the photo into a vertical instead of horizontal. The wallpaper in the background was darkened and blurred to help it become less distracting. The background behind mom needed to be repaiered and blended once she was moved.

Cropped Creation

When I first snapped this photo I knew it was a disaster. One person leaning backward and too close, the other listing in the opposite direction. Although when I studied the photo I noticed that there still was something there to save.

I cropped the photo down to one person. I removed the shine from her face, added a skin softener and glamour glow and darkened the edges. Keeping her face sharp and bluring the background edges draws the eyes to the center of the photo and her pretty face. Just for fun I added an artistic filter to give the image a painterly quality.

From disaster to delightful! Happy Easter!