High school graduation season is upon us and seniors are looking for fresh designs to showcase their announcements. Hot off our Photoshop desk is a classy black and white design 4x8 photo card design which will compliment any color photography.
As a gift to you we are offering this free Photoshop template as one of several we will be offering throughout the year.
Draft Horses (SOOC)
A sight you don’t see very often a team of horses mowing the grader ditches. Makes one wonder if the Nebraska state budget is in that dire of straits, or if gas prices have just gone up a little too much. We found these Belgian mares north of Lincoln Nebraska and also saw them four days later, raking the same ditch, but these images came out the best.
I don’t remember their names, but they are full sisters, one a seven year old and the other other eleven.
Team of Belgians Mowing
Edits were done in Lightroom 4 with a decrease in exposure, increase in clarity and opening up shadows on the horses to bring out detail. The sky was still washed out so I used the adjustment brush and decreased the exposure in the sky to get a better balanced image. Voilia! Clouds appeared.
1931 Model A Ford Deluxe Coupe
One of my favorite customers at work drives a 1931 Model A Ford Coupe and every time I get a little thrill when he pulls it up to the front door. Bill just turned 90 this past week and he sold used Fords in the 1930′s. At the time you could buy a used Ford for $15.00, can’t even fill the gas tank for that amount now. His goal, to own every model built between 1929 and 1937, not all at once, but before he dies.
This one he purchased about a year ago in Chicago, he’s done a little work to it, and is now ready to move on to the next. So, if you’re in the market for a true American classic and a piece of living history, this automobile is for you. Even comes with a rumble seat, which is so cool, next time Bill comes in he said he would give me a ride around the parking lot.
I told Bill I would spread the word, so if anyone is interested please send me your email address and I will forward the information and connect the two of you together. The car is located in Omaha, Nebraska and is being sold by owner.
The first part of March my hubby and I attended the Great Nebraska Horse Fair in Lincoln Nebrasaka at the Lancaster Event Center. Meet some wonderful people including Jess and her yearling Belgian horse above. Photo was taken inside a horse trailer and lighting was just a little poor. Didn’t want to use my flash so just opened up the aperture.
I first rendered this in GIMP and adjusted the white balance. Although it rendered the image accurate the photo just didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. So after cropping in Photoshop I used a the Color layer adjustment with orange at about a 10% opacity to give the overall image a warmer tone.
What do you think?
From the archives come a Photoshop before and after from last summers trip to Block Island, Rhode Island.
First I straightened the image about 2 degrees clockwise. I was a little off kilter taking the picture. Then adjusted the levels and curves. The swimmers in the water were bothering me, so I cloned them out.
I’ve learned some things since then, one I would decrease the saturation after resizing. Another change, instead of sharpening I use the unsharpen mask, seems to work cleaner. But overall, I like the bottom version better, what do you think?
Let’s render an image of a tulip into something that pops just a little, but doesn’t take it over the edge.
This week I’m just showing how subtle editing can improve a photograph without going over the top, as I have a tendency to do sometimes, according to my daughter.
Tulip SOOC (straight out of the camera)
This edit first involved adding a levels adjustment layer and darkening the whole image. I selected the pink color in Image/Adjustment/Selective Color and added more magenta, which brightened the color in the petals.
The white portion of the petals seemed washed out so I then used the Burn tool and stroked over the creases in the bottom of the petal, which brought out the fine streaks. I then used the sponge tool and desaturated the background.
I tried some special effects with this image, but I was never quite happy with them, so I settled on realism.
Sometimes my commute home takes twice as long as I stop and take pictures. Yesterday was no exception as the combination of the sky, clouds and the emerging spring greenery beckoned me more than once to stop the car.
The straight out of camera was just dull and flat. Not nearly what I saw visually with the naked eye. So after adjusting the white balance down from blue to more green in Gimp I then went to work in photoshop.
I first brightened the whole image. Then selected the blues in the sky and copied the results into their own sky layer. From there I adjusted the blue until it was vibrant.
As a result of brightening the foreground grass was blown out. To fix I color selected browns from the foreground and copied into a new layer. This layer I darkened. In actuality there are three different exposures in this image. Probably not technically correct, but that’s the result.
A little background on the tree, it’s been one of my favorite vistas on my drive home between Murdock and Elmwood for many years. I’ve often wanted to stop and take a picture against the ever changing Nebraska sky. Now I have an excuse. My goal is to take regular images as the seasons and weather changes, then stitch them together in a time lapse fashion to represent a yearly “life of a tree”.
Has anyone attempted something like this? If so I’d love to see the result.
I’m starting a new series, Photoshop Friday. In one way I miss my 365 Project and blogging on a more regular basis, and between picking just one photo per week it leaves me little room to experiment with Photoshop. So I’ll be choosing photos which I think I can improve with post production. So here is week one of Photoshop Friday.
