playing

I havn't done any photoshop manipulation for a while so I thought I'd give it a go again. I like it!

New Project

I have recently joined a group on flickr all about re-touching called "Points of View - Retouching Issues".  Everyone in the group is given the same photo and we all have to retouch it in our own way, however we like.  The photo above is my attempt and below is the original image (it is not my photograph it was supplied by a member of the group).  I think that this is a relatively new group so I hope that it survives in the big wide world of flickr because I think that it is a super idea!  It is really interesting to see how different people approach the same image and come up with completely different outcomes.  

ps. its my birthday today, yay!!

photoshop tricks

I wanted to share this quick little photoshop trick which gives images that lovely vintage feel.  I have been experimenting a lot with loads and loads of different techniques, spent hours researching different tools and techniques, sometimes forgetting to write down what i am doing which is not very helpful when it comes to getting that effect again!   So I thought I'd share one of my ways to get a vintage effect.  I must add that I didn't make up this particular trick entirely on my own, I have used a quite well know technique that I found instructions for on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7Tv52F5nlQ  and tweaked it a bit to get it to work for me so here goes:

Open up you image:

Then create a curves adjustment layer and on each individual channel set the curve like this:

Sometimes the curves need to be adjusted and tweaked slightly according to each individual image but this is a good starting point.  It should make the tones in the image look something like this:

As you can see from the above image it is almost there but, this is the part that I have played with for ages to get right!  I feel that just using curves makes the image lack punch somehow so I like to up the contrast a bit using levels and and sometimes add a selective colour adjustment layer and increase the blacks.  This really gives the image punch and adds some depth to it.  Once you have played with Levels and Selective colour the final result should look something like this:

I hope that you will find this tutorial useful, thanks for looking x

Experimenting

I have been playing about with photoshop lately to try to come up with some different techniques.  Found a great photoshop action on Flickr (www.flickr.com/groups/michelleblack/), the top one has this action applied and the 2 underneath are my own creations,  can't decide which one I like the best.  The photo is part of my 365 project.