Sometimes it's only as good as the picture!

About 4 years ago my husband and I went to the Caribbean and he managed to take a couple of pictures of a hummingbird in a tree.  However, the lighting wasn't good and it was nigh impossible to get a picture of the little bird when he wasn't moving.  I looked through these pictures recently hoping that I might find one that I could resurrect especially as I have learnt a lot in the past 4 years.

Unfortunately, the bird displayed some purple fringing and chromatic aberration which was emphasized when I tried to lightening the bird or change the overall lighting.  I applied a texture to the end result to add some interest but mostly to mask the poor quality.  It looks fine from a distance but close-up you can see it's not really good enough.  Sometimes you just have to accept that the photo is not good enough in the first place.

The original:

The end result:

Having said that, 'revealing' a photograph can have surprising results.  On one trip to Langkawi island in Malaysia, we went on a nature walk in the evening with a guide to look at the unusual creatures in the forest.  There are flying squirrels and creatures called colugos.  We didn't get a really good look at one but my husband pointed his camera at the place in the tree where he knew the creature had landed hoping that the flash might yield a picture:

You could only see gleaming eyes but when we did an auto-contrast this is what we found!  It might not be a great picture but at least we got a look at this amazing flying animal.

Bottles

I took this picture of some bottles and a mug at a brewery and wondered how I could jazz it up a bit.

This is what I came up with:

Mosaic Filter

Just experimenting, really.

I converted the cut-out cat to black and white and then applied the mosaic filter using large squares.  I then blended that with a red layer plus the original picture of the cat and merged the layers.  Then I copied the mosaic cat and applied the filter glowing edges and blended it using the screen blend.  Finally I used the colour blend with a red and blue mosaic layer.  Actually, it would take to long to explain properly so have a look at the layers below!

Here are the layers:

Stills from Videos

We have a tree outside our bedroom window upstairs and in the mornings there are lots of birds from the family of Tits which flit in its branches.  I have always wanted to get some pics but they are so fidgety that it's impossible to get a good shot so I decided I would see if I could get some decent stills if I took video of them.

I have to say that by the time I got my act together it was way past their breakfast hour so I didn't get them at the best time.  My video camera takes HD video as well as standard which means you can get high quality video but it's also a pain to convert.  The standard mode you can watch in Windows Media Player.   Luckily I have Sony's Vegas Movie Studio so I imported the video in and tried various settings. Only the video settings of HDV 1080 1440x1080 gave a decent still picture and even this was not anywhere near as good as a similar picture taken with a DSLR.  If you zoom in the pixelation is quite clear.  However, if you're creating an arty type picture it is less important.

I need to give it another go because I really didn't get enough video and the birds were always obsured by a branch!  I didn't actually try taking a 'snapshot' which is also possible with this video camera.

Anyhow, here's a pic.  I changed the lighting levels, saturation and sharpened it slightly:

Trying to Find Inspiration

I've been struggling with inspiration this week which is very unusual for me.  I created a doodle which I thought would be fantastic and it just didn't work.  I feel like I have run out of photographs which is ridiculous 'cause I have loads but I am looking forward to an upcoming holiday to give me some new stock and to help me with inspiration.

Anyhow, I pulled out an old picture of some lambs I like and added a couple of textures.  hmmm...not sure.

Journal Pages in Photoshop Elements

I am still experimenting with creating journal type pages in Photoshop Elements and of course Valentine's Day is the perfect opportunity.  I don't feel that I have got there yet but enjoying the challenge: