phewse photoblog

Some helpful photography blogs I’ve come across recently:

• SyncSpeed
• DigiSniper
• DIY Photography
• Digital Photography School

I’d definitely recommend checking these sites out—there’s some great information to be found from them all.

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.