phewse photoblog

For the weekend, my family and I are up at our house on Sebago Lake, Maine, and I was out taking some photos of my mom as she floated on the raft. I took one of my favorites into Photoshop and did some editing, and in the process I got some help online as well. Here’s the final image:

So, first off, after playing around with levels and curves (good look at the curves tool here), I wanted to make this photo very sharp, if not oversharp, so I could get a lot of texture from the way she was squinting her eyes. A lot of places I’ve read always rave about using unsharp mask, so I did a little searching for info, and I came across this site on how to use it. After reading through and trying it, however, it didn’t quite turn out like I wanted. However, as I was doing this, I was also watching the Radiant Vista Sizing Files for Web tutorial, and he mentioned something about Smart Sharpen, so I tried that and really liked the effect I got.

Then, I wanted to give it a bit of a “grittier” type of feel, and I came across the Lazlo toning action which, after playing around with a bit, gave me exactly the look I wanted.

Finally, using the Radiant Vista method for resizing files for the web that I mentioned, I resized the image and put it up on flickr.

Well, it’s time for my first “how-to,” and this one is a pretty cool one—creating a “soft focus” effect within Photoshop. This works well for flower shots, but it can also be used very nicely with portraiture. Basically, what I’m going to show you how to do is to take an image, like the one on the top below and transform it into the one on the bottom, which gains a sort of surreal effect. Click either of the pictures for a better look at what I’m describing.

This is really simple to achieve, and can be a lot of fun—read on for detailed steps.

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The other day, while browsing around, I came across The Radiant Vista, a really excellent site with loads of information. I watched a few of the video tutorials, most notably Combining Two Exposures and Making Sophisticated Selections.

The Radiant Vista offers all sorts of great help, such as The Photoshop Workbench, which is a really great feature, where:

Every week a 15 to 20 minute video will be available for download. This video will feature a submitted image onscreen in Photoshop with a soundtrack, which will contain suggestions on getting the most out of your image in the digital darkroom. These suggestions follow a general workflow making it very easy to pick up tips and tricks.

I really love learning visually, and this site definitely pulls it off. They offer PDF tutorials in addition to videos, and all of their videos are offered in Quicktime, Windows Media, and iPod formats.