Special Effect Example 3

Here is and example of a soft, glowing Selective Black & White.

I will start off with this where I left off on the restoration of this same original photo (see previous posts).

This customer wanted a Selective Black & White version of this photo. She asked me to leave the flowers red and the eyes blue. So, after the restoration, I carefully selected the tulips, inverted the selection, and feathered it so that it would look like it glowed. I then inverted the selection to select the all of the photo except the flowers copied it.

After all of this, added a bright blue to the eyes instead of keeping them her natural blue, because blue can be difficult to see against shades of gray. I then used several different softening filters to create several different “glowing” versions of this photograph, presented them to my customer, and she chose this one.

To turn this into a Black & White, I used a completely different program. You can make perfectly acceptable Black & Whites using Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop Elements and absolutely incredible ones using Adobe Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3, but I prefer using another program altogether, called The Gimp. It has a great Channel Mixer, which allows you to choose the color “channels” you want to use to create your Black & White. There really is no “correct” combination of colors, it depends on the colors and lighting of your original photo, how many main colors there are, and how dramatic you want the final product to look.
To see this photo “Magically” become Black & White see www.GinisMagic.com http://www.ginismagic.com/.

Fantasy Portrait Example 2

This is me again! Some people are embarrassed by their baby pictures, but I’m not. I was adorable and I know it! =)

In this case, I used my own face and put it on a picture of a daisy that I had taken earlier. It is quite an involved process, and I don’t want to reveal all my secrets, especially since I don’t know of anyone else who does portraits like these, so I won’t be explaining this one in detail. Sorry.

After adding my face to the flower, I changed the hue of the “Face” layer to more of a yellow/orange color in order to help it blend into the flower. Then I used one of my Special Effects to make it appear as if the facial features were actually coming out of the flower itself. This one was done partially in Microsoft Digital Image Pro and partially in Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop Elements.

There are more examples of these portraits on my website, www.GinisMagic.com http://www.ginismagic.com/.

Restoration Example 2

Much of the time, repairing a photo is more difficult than it looks. This was not one of the those cases.



Though it may look difficult because such large pieces are missing, the majority of what was missing was background, so repairing them mostly involved some creative cloning and blending.


The most difficult part to fix was the piece missing from the lower left corner, because part of the child’s leg is missing. This took some time to rebuild, but it’s pretty believable, isn’t it?

Portrait Enhancement Example 2

This photo was taken by a friend of the bride, not a professional photographer. Overall, It is a beautiful picture. The problem: It was obviously shot in the early to mid afternoon, when sun was high and shining directly on the bride; causing dramatic shadows and hiding her beautiful blue eyes.

The details of what I corrected included lots of detail work around the eyes, lightening shadows on the neck and chest, adding shiny highlights to each jewel on the tiara and each pearl, and some dodging and burning on the lace of the dress.

Special Effect Example 2

Here is an example of another one of my favorite Special Effects; Brownie Diffuse.

This effect is a mixture of two different filters, some dodging, some burning, and some good, old fashioned, tinkering with color and saturation. It was done completely in Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10, but it can just as easily be done in Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop Elements