Building Transformation

From this:

to this:

or maybe this:

I will be demonstrating the technique of creating this picture in my next course which I will be starting in the new year.... Will be giving details soon.

Old vs New

While my husband and I were in Hong Kong one of our favourite visits was to the Nan Lian Gardens.  Here is a photo my husband took which is a real contrast of old and new.  To emphasis the contrast I converted the background to black and white.

I am about to create an photo album for a friend of mine and thought I would try out some of the options under the Guided section of PSE10.  By going to Photo Play, Picture Stack I changed the picture to this with just a couple of clicks:

It's well worth trying out the Guided options if you want some funky pages for an album.

Beetle in PSE

Okay, so I couldn't resist going away and changing my beetle in PSE.  Picasa is good for a quick fix but that's all.

Here are 4 variations.  I think I like the first but finding it difficult to decide....

More Picasa..

I don't always use my flash camera partly because I keep my point and click with me almost everywhere I go and it's often unexpected scenes that I get my best shots.

On my recent trip to Indonesia I took this picture of a ....hmmm...flying beetle(?) getting nectar from a gorgeous hanging flower tree.  I am really chuffed with this shot because it's not taken with a flash DSLR, just an ordinary camera.  Just love my little Panasonic....

So thought I would submit it to Photo Art Friday.  I gave it a quick change in Picasa which I am playing around with at the moment.  Sharpened the image slightly, cropped it and then applied a soft focus.

However, think a serious manipulation might be happening on this one sometime.....

Picasa

One of the things I find when teaching Photoshop Elements is that for many people it is just too overwhelming and too feature rich.  After an intensive 2 day course, some users walk away dazed and almost unable to remember anything.  The majority of people on the street just want to be able to crop their photos, remove redeye and improve the lighting.

I am now looking at giving one day courses using Picasa which is really all that most people need to clean up their photos.  It's not good enough for serious photo manipulation but it's amazing how you can create some really fun versions of a photo that look very professional.

On our recent trip to Indonesia my husband took some wonderful pictures of dragonflies.  The photo I am using here is really sharp which is always my main criteria for producing good quality results.

Here is some variations using Picasa:

With this first version I went through the follow steps:

1. Soft Focus under the first Image Processing tab.
2. Cross Process under the second Image Processing tab.
3. I cropped it using the photos current ratio (first tab).
4. Finally I exported it by going to File>Export Picture to Folder..., reducing the size and adding a watermark.

With this version I:

1. Added a Soft Focus under the first Image Processing tab.
2. Then I applied a Focal B&W.
3. Upped the saturation by going to Saturation.
4. Finally cropped the photo and exported it with a watermark.

With this version I:

1. Cropped the picture first using the photo's ratio.
2. Applied a beige vignette Image Process.
3. Finally I exported it and added a watermark.

With this final version I:

1. Applied the Image Process HDR-ish.
2. Cropped it using the photo's ration.
3. Applied the Image Process Museum Matte.
4. Finally exported it and added a watermark.

Not bad for a free piece of software!

Lines

I see that the theme for this week at Photo Art Friday is 'lines' so I dug around in my photo library and came across this photo of a boat:

It was pretty boring so I thought this would be a great challenge.  Amongst other things, I added a couple of birds, changed the sky to reduce the contrast and added a wood-grain texture to give it an old vintage look:

Here's another attempt with a different blend: