Day 232 of 365 Day Challenge

I went with a friend of mine to Repulse Bay today to walk her dog and have a cuppa. I had no idea that at the end of the beach there is a temple with dozens of statues. Wow. I wanted to go bananas and take loads of photos but just took a few and loaded it into my memory bank as a place to return to to have a good photo session.

However, there was one female statue that really resonated with me. Peaceful and graceful. So I took a photo and when I got home I decided to make it look like an old vintage photograph. I used an app for this called My Sketch which I don't often use because it insists on resizing your photo which makes it frustrating to blend back with other versions of the photo. I must find a good sketch app that I like which enables the use of a square photo. I'm beginning to think the best way to do it is to blend a photo with a sketchy texture. Anyhow, I managed it and loved the result.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Snapseed, iColorama, My Sketch, PaintCan, Marksta

Dragonfly

What I love about PSE is that even if you have a picture which perhaps isn't the best you can still do something interesting with it.  I managed to get this picture of a dragonfly with my little point-and-click camera and I was disappointed that the leaf was obscuring part of it but I wanted to see what I could do with it.  It's a beautiful summer day in an otherwise wet season so I wanted something to reflect summer.

Here is the original:

Here is what I did:

I made it look like an old vintage picture and I would be quite happy to print that on a thank you card and send it to a friend.  The texture is by Jerry (and if you use a lot of his textures don't forget to leave him a donation - he does great work).

Still Inspired by my Singapore Pics

From a Chore to Heart Wrenching

I needed to get something out on my blog today - yeah, we all dig around in our jumble box sometimes just to get something out on the blog.

I took a picture of a teddy bear that we had recently been given and just messed around with it in PSE.  But honestly, it looked naff.  So I thought let me try and make it look vintage so I added a picture of my sister and all of a sudden my Mother's old story came back to me with piercing sadness.

When she was about 4 her Dad threw away her teddy bear because she left it once too often lying around in the lounge.  She never forgave her father for this and it was one of the few stories she told about her happy but strict childhood.

So in her 80s she bought herself a little old fashioned looking teddy bear and crocheted some clothes for it and propped it lovingly on her bed until she sadly passed away just before Christmas last year.

So the picture I ended up doing completely changed and I took a picture of her teddy which is now propped up lovingly on my bed. I think it's quite hard for me to put it on here and if you see a smudge on the photo it's probably one of my tears.

She's the little girl in the middle of the family picture and I left the tear across the middle of this picture because I think it was meant to be there.

Back to Vintage

I'm always trying to see if I can digitally mimic art done by hand and my intention was to try and mimic stamped cards.  However, as so often happens, I make a discovery in the process and end up doing something completely different.  So in the process of using some vintage images, this is what I got.  Again, not sure which one I like best:

Just a quick rose.....

Adding a Lace Frame

I'm putting together bits and pieces that I can use in some sort of vintage collage.  So today I scanned in five different pieces of lace and created paint brushes in PE with them (horizontal and vertical).  I then created a lace frame with one of the pieces of lace that I could use with my photographs.

Just as an example, I have used the photograph I cleaned up in the previous post and added a slight brown tint so that the combination of the lace and picture was evident.

Here is how you do it:

• Open a new blank page in Photoshop Elements and open the document that contains the frame. 
• Drag the frame into the new document and resize it as required.  Now simplify the layer by first making the layer active and then going to the menu and choosing Layer>Simplify Layer.

• Fill the inside of the lace with a shape.  The picture will only show where the lace and shape is.

• Now open up the picture you wish to combine with the lace.
• Drag in the picture and make sure that it is the top layer.  Size it to the same size as the lace frame (lower the opacity of the top layer to see through and then put it back to 100%).
• Group the layers by selecting Layer>Group with Previous.  You can move the picture around so that you can put it where you want in the frame.

More pictures..

I thought this picture of a little girl quite delightful.  Not sure how I can use her but am sure an opportunity will arise.  Here is the before and after.

An easy way of getting rid of brown stains in the background of an old picture, is to convert it into black and white first and then to do the necessary editing.  You can always add a brown tint later if required.
 

Transforming a Picture

Sometimes if a picture is difficult to clean up, I will completely transform it and turn it into a 'painting' rather than a photo.  I had a bit of fun with this one - added a rose and will probably incorporate it into some sort of collage.

Old Photos - Replacing the Background

Sometimes the background in a photograph is not worth patching up in a traditional way.  I decided in the photograph below to 'cut out' the little girl and put her on a separate layer so I could more freely clean up the bottom layer. When I made the selection, I refined the edges by setting the smooth to about 30 and feathered edge to about 20 so that the cut-out would blend back into the picture.

For the background I used the colour picker to get different colours and the Impressionist brush tool to smear the background covering any of the brown bits.

I added the colours on separate layers too so that I could change them if I wanted.

The little girl's face was a bit tricky as it was quite blemished. I reconstructed the nose by copying the left side and flipping it horizontally. Once I had done a lot of cleaning on the face, I used the smudge tool as well with a strength of 55%. The face is not perfect but then it is supposed to be an old photograph anyway.

Cleaning up old pictures

I have been scanning in old photographs at quite a high resolution of 720 ppi.  It always amazes me how the scanner manages to pick up every scratch and tear and a picture that at a glance doesn't look bad, is often riddled with imperfections.

Here is a picture of an adorable little girl that I have cleaned up.  The colours that I applied to the picture were kept on separate layers so that I could change them if I wished.

I use 3 main tools in PE (Photoshop Elements) to clean up photographs, the spot healing and healing brush, the clone tool and a brush.  When cleaning the face, I often find that an ordinary brush works best.  It is  painstaking but if you use the colour picker to pick an adjacent colour and then brush the imperfections at lower opacities, it is easier to get a smoother transition.

It just takes a bit of practise (and patience) but here are some tips:

• When getting rid of little spots, use the smallest possible size for the spot healer.
• When cleaning up a background like the picture above a bigger spot healer is often better - it requires a bit of experimentation, really.
• If you have a long scratch it is tempting to try and get rid of it with one sweep of the spot healer but often small clicks along the scratch will do a better job.
• Get to know the short cuts especially when using a brush for correction.  For example, I press the i to get the eye dropper tool, select the colour I want and then press the b to get the brush again.  Often, you will need to go backwards and forwards between these tools to make enough corrections.