Photoshop is Amazing!
As most of you are aware, we welcomed our daughter into the world 2 weeks early and by emergency c-section. I had a ton of ideas, props, set ups, etc that I wanted to pose her in as soon as we got home. Well, nature and recovery had a different plan and add to the mix being home alone, recovering, and caring for two kids I did not get the newborn shots that I had wanted. Pooot. :(
Looking back now, I’m pretty bummed, but on the flip side I did manage to at least attempt a few which provided me with some images to work with. The image below is just a starting point on what you can work towards. I have other shots that I will be working on to try and morph two images together to get the one shot I wanted, that will come later but for now we’ll play with textures.
So here is the original of first one (because after 2 hours of going through all her newborn pics, narrowing them down – again – finding the right textures, colors, etc. that’s about all I can do tonight!)
SOOC – Needed some minor editing to brighten the photo, otherwise there’s really nothing wrong with this image. I personally like it just the way it is but for the sake of this post we’re going to “bedazzle” it!
To this: After local adjustments, then began the more creative editing of layers, masks, textures and an eraser. :)
Not too shabby, eh? Now I’m feeling a little less like a failure and more like a good ol procrastinator that had a good image all along but was just too, eh, tired to get around to it! You don’t have to go crazy over the top like I did, you can lower the opacity on your layer so the texture isn’t so detailed, you can add a different color, skip the vignette, etc. The wonderful part of editing is that you can play around until you’re happy. I warn you now that playing will lead you to posting your blog at 1am when you should be sleeping *yawn*.
My biggest issue with this image was that in my fatigue state of mind, I failed to notice that the sheet was wrinkled. Two fixes that I considered was what I just did the second was to just clone the wrinkles out. Set your clone to a low opacity (or you could even use the Smudge tool) and brush away the wrinkles. It also was just plain and not much to draw you into the photo. Yes there’s a baby sleeping, wonderful, next! There had to be something to make me stop, pause and look. Maybe it’s just the photographer mindset, but I’m always scanning images, when it’s a good one, then I look at it and take it in.
So what have we learned today? DO NOT move to another state when you’re about to pop, go into labor 2 weeks early and try to push, pull and drag all your photo equipment in because you’ll end up worn out, fed up and lacking photo-moto for pictures. Hire someone to help or a photographer instead. :)
