iHeartFaces: Week 29 -- Silly Faces

This picture was taken a few months ago, when I took my girls out to meet their new little cousin. With the help of one of my sisters-in-law, I got this pic of me and my 2-year-old holding my nephew. My daughter's proud, excited little face at getting to hold her cousin is one reason I chose this pic for the "silly" category, as well as the expression that my nephew is making. It cracks me up how he's looking at me as if to say, "Who the heck is THIS??"



Comments and critiques are always appreciated!

Please visit iheartfaces.blogspot.com for lots more entries!

Fix-It Friday #23

Well, I thought I'd try my hand at another Fix-it Friday picture, and for the first time I used (mostly) PSE7 to do it. I played with certain features of this one more than usual in (probably) quirky ways, but for the most part I left the rest of the picture pretty similar to the original. That probably doesn't make any sense until I explain it, though. :-)

Here is the original photo, taken by the writer of this blog:



Here is my edit:



What I did:
* First of all, I wanted to crop the picture down to get this cute little guy on one side. But to do that, I kept having to crop out most of the pretty flowers. So I figured, what the heck... I'll move the flowers. So I did:
-- Selected the flowers using the Quick Selection tool.
-- Created a new layer via copy.
-- Used the Move tool to move it upward and over to the left a little.
-- Flattened the image.
-- Used the Clone Stamp tool to blend it in a bit.

* Next, I was not crazy about how the colors of his shirt clashed with the flowers. So I changed the colors of his shirt. :-)
-- Selected most of the shirt.
-- Turned down the saturation.
-- Played with the hue until it more or less matched the flowers. (I didn't even have to play with the individual surf boards on his shirt... At whatever hue it was, they all suddenly matched at the same time!)

* Then I turned to the more minor points of lighting and color, and that was the easy part.
-- Lightened the shadows a bit.
-- Brought up the midtone contrast a little.
-- Brought up the overall contrast a tiny bit.
-- Sharpened it some.

* Then I used the clone stamp tool (turned down to about 20% opacity) to lighten the dark spots under his eyes.

* And finally, I added a vignette. For this, I had to leave PSE7 and go back to my old standard Picnik, because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do a decent vignette in PSE. If anyone has any advice on that matter, please let me know! :-)

I am still very new to Photoshop, so if this looks like a rookie's work... it is, lol. If you have any other comments or critiques on my fix, or advice on using PSE7, I would love to hear them! Thanks for visiting!

iHeartFaces: Week 28 -- Sandy Toes

Well, I haven't entered for a few weeks (mostly due to lack of appropriate pictures for the weekly categories), but I had to come back for Foot Week! This week, instead of making sure there is a face in the picture, the challenge is to make sure there is at least one foot in the picture. So, armed with my newly-acquired Photoshop Elements 7 (which was another reason I haven't been back -- trying to figure the darn thing out!), I present my entry.




These cute little sandy toes belong to my two-year-old daughter on her birthday. I tried to make the picture look "beachy," but actually she was just playing in her new sandbox. (Shh! Don't tell!)

Please let me know what you think! Critiques are welcome as well as compliments. I love comments!!

Also, please check out some of the other entries at iheartfaces.blogspot.com! And make an entry yourself, if you wish. It's fun stuff! :-)

Fix-It Friday #18

This pic was not at all difficult to "fix" -- it was already so precious! But here are the edits that I came up with.

Original photo, by the author of this blog:


My edition version:


Again not being terribly specific, here are the general steps that I took in my editing process (using Picnik):
1) Crop -- cropped it down to a better-focused, more interesting composition (in my opinion at least :-p).
2) Curves -- adjusted the lighting, adding more exposure and contrast.
3) Gritty -- to mute the color slightly and make the lines (local contrast) "pop" a little more. (This is probably my favorite Picnik tool, as you may be able to see from my edited pics so far on this blog. :-p)
4) Focal zoom -- to mute the background and put more focus on this beautiful face.
5) Soften -- only on the skin, to give it a smoother appearance.
6) Zombify -- on the eyes, to bring out the catch light just a tiiiiny bit more.
7) Saturation -- putting a teensy bit more color back in there. :-)
8) Matte -- to soften the edges of the photo.
9) Frames -- self-explanatory. :-)

iHeartFaces: Week 23 -- Cutie Pie

For the challenge "sepia-toned," here is a recent favorite of my younger cutie pie.



Comments and critiques are much appreciated. Thanks for visiting!

Check out other entries at iheartfaces.blogspot.com, and come join in the fun!

Fix-It Friday #16

I've never participated in the iHeartFaces Fix-it Friday challenge before, but this one looked like a fun challenge that was too good to pass up.

Here is the original photo, taken by the author of this blog.






















And here it is with my edits.



Just for fun, here's what I did, using the online editing program Picnik, the premium version. (I'm not going to be incredibly detailed, but here are the basics.)

1) Exposure -- added more highlights and upped the contrast a little. Also some local contrast to add more definition.
2) Curves -- to adjust the color.
3) Clone -- to clean up the under-eye area.
4) Vibrance -- to bring out more color, especially in the eyes.
5) Black and White, then Vibrance again -- to mute the color ever so slightly and then bring it back out in certain key features such as the eyes, lips, and cheeks.
6) Zombify -- to bring out more depth in the eyes.
7) Frames -- self-explanatory. :-)

And there ya go. Sometimes I have even more fun editing pictures than taking them, so this turned out to be a great thing for me! :-)

iHeartFaces: Week 21 -- Happy Birthday!

What perfect timing for this category! My daughter Lucy celebrated her second birthday yesterday. We recently moved several hours away from any extended family, so sadly we weren't able to celebrate with them. But we had a nice little party at home with Daddy, Mommy, and Baby Sister. I got lots of fun pictures of her playing with her new toys, but none of them were an obvious birthday theme. So in the end, I went with this one of her opening one of her presents.



(Economical side note: 2-year-olds don't care what the present is wrapped in, just so long as it is a present, and it's wrapped. Hence the newspaper as wrapping paper. Also a great way to recycle!) ;-)

Anyway, I know this entry isn't going to win or anything, but I loved it because of her face in this picture -- she is in the middle of saying, "Ooooooo!" as she opens her present. Classic Lucy expression. :-D

Check out some of the other entries at iheartfaces.blogspot.com, and join in the fun! And if you have a comment or critique to share with me, that would be much appreciated! Thanks for visiting.