Saturday, August 14, 2010

photoshop talk

I'm just now discovering the magical powers of photoshop. I've always been so intimidated, until I discovered "actions". I know there are many experts out there (and a whole 2 that even read my blog) probably rolling their eyes and saying , "that is sooooo yesterday", but in case there are any fellow photoshop virgins out there, here are a few tips...

Pioneer woman has the best actions (what doesn't pioneer woman do that's the best?) go here to follow her instructions to download them for free. Once you have them downloaded, prepare to spend hours playing around with it. My favorites, and the ones I used for this photo, are fresh & colorful + boost (both in her first set) + colorized (in her second set). I love that with one click you can change the whole look of the photo instead of spending so long manually adjusting each setting.


Coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com also has some fun free actions and iheartfaces.com also has some great photography tips, that's where I learned how to make the eyes pop. When you have your picture opened in photoshop, use the magnetic lasso tool to highlight the eyes (push shift when you're highlighting the second eye so they're both on the same layer), click "copy", then "paste" (this should create the new layer). Then go to "filter", "other", "high pass". Then click on "layer", "vivid light", and prepare to be amazed at them eyes. Melissa was nice to let me interrupt her cleaning day {gasp} and kidnap her beautiful baby so that I could play around with my camera...





Another trick I learned from my friend, Chelsea, is how to make your pictures bigger on blogger. Once you upload your picture, click on the "edit html" button (next to compose in the edit post mode), on the code for the picture look for "WIDTH: 400 px; DISPLAY;block; HEIGHT: 267 px" and delete that whole line. Then look for "s400" and change it to "s576", then click the "compose" button and that's it! Thanks, Chels!

5 comments:

Janessa said...

Wow! Those are amazing pictures! I need you to live by me!!! You can teach me all the tricks of the trade and you can take pictures of my kids because you are the master! I'm sure Melissa can't be too upset about having her cleaning day interupted to get such beautiful pictures of that adorable little baby. That foot picture is so perfect. They are so hard to get just right! I can't wait to get a camera and photo shop. I will definitely be revisiting this post. Thanks for lesson!

Michelle Y. said...

My favorite is "Lovely and Ethreal" on Pioneer Woman. Also, I used to enlarged my pics that way but now there is a setting and you just have to click on Settings and scroll down to "updated editor" and it lets you do so much more...it has changed my blogging life :) So much easier to enlarge photos and download them. Great pics! You are a pro!

Angie Whitman said...

I'm not easily impressed... at least I don't think I am?? BUT, those are some seriously dramatic and beautiful touch ups to those pic's! They make a world of difference! My favorite part... was the word FREE!!

Kelly said...

Awesome! That's pretty much all I ever use is actions. What's even better is to program them to correspond to the F keys on your computer. If you haven't done that, email me, and I'll send you a link. I love it. BEAUTIFUL pics, Jamie. I love PW's "Sharpen This" action because you can sharpen bits and pieces of a photo rather than the whole thing.

Jodee said...

oh man, I have been totally scared of photoshop and now I am even more terrified, sounds so confusing! I am such an editing lame-o, I can't do it to save my life! I think I view shots better through the lens than through the computer, once they are up there I can't decide what to do!