Special Effects with Photoshop CS3

I've been taking some online classes at Jessica Sprague's website on editing and enhancing digital photos, and also about adding special effects to them like frames, cool text, word art, textures, etc. It's so much fun!

Here's my effort from Lesson 1 of Jessica's class titled "Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects:" I first took the photo through the steps I learned in the class "Photo Editing: Good-to-Great Workflow" and then I cropped it, applied a digital frame, and added the word art and text.I love how it turned out! It could be framed as is, or placed on a digital scrapbook layout.

The "frame-ups" class is instructor-led, by Jessica herself, and is going on now. I'm sure it'll be offered again so if you are interested take a peek at her website. The "workflow" class is self-paced so you can get in on it anytime you like. There are other classes, too, on digital scrapbooking, organization, and even mini-classes where you make a single hybrid scrapbooking page.

I'm hoping to get caught up on the lessons in the "frame-ups" class (I was on vacation during the first week) and will share my finished creations here as I go.

Keep an eye out for a new freebie SOON, too!

Photo Repair and Restoration Project In Work

At the fundraiser on Saturday I met a number of people interested in having old, damaged photos repaired and restored. Here is the first project I have been working on today; a photo of my client as a little girl. A very precious photo, but it's taken quite the beating over the years:
It's painstaking work, and it's not done yet, but here is the result so far:
Better! Still have a ways to go, though, most of the work left to do is on the right side of the photo. It's so rewarding seeing this photo come back to life! I'll be working more on the contrast and tone of the photo as well as finishing the repair where cracks and tape residue have done their damage.

The restoration continues tomorrow. I'll post another version after I've made more progress.

New Baby Layout - Digi-Scrapping Style

One of the things I love about digital scrapbooking is the way I can manipulate photos.

I can change them to black-and-white, enlarge, shrink, enhance the color and contrast, crop in creative ways, and much more. I can also apply all kinds of filters, borders, spot coloring, remove blemishes and distracting elements, combine two or more photos to get the best smile on everyone in a large group, add or remove people from a group shot....it just goes on and on.

The layout above used just one photo. I took the photo, enlarged it, changed it to black and white, and used it as the layout background. Then I used the same photo, in a smaller size, cropped it into a circle, and blurred the edges. Then I simply added the text.

It's always been one of my favorites.

ShaZAM'n my Photos

Here's why I love blogs...people share so much COOL STUFF!

The English Geek wrote today about a new, quick & easy Photoshop technique that she'd found at Jessica Sprague's blog. Jessica calls it "ShaZAM" and it really makes the colors POP!

I decided to try it right away, on the above photo of my cousin, Stacy's, youngest son, Nick, during a swimming lesson. This next photo shows the result:
Wow!! The funny thing is that I thought that the original was a perfectly fine photo, but the enhanced version has much better color and contrast. I love this technique and am going to make a Photoshop Action for it becauseI'm going to be using it a LOT. My custom-designed digital scrapbook clients are going to love it, too.

Thx, Jessica!

It's "Wedding Season!"

Love is in the air . . . and 'tis the season for weddings. I love weddings - of course, who doesn't? The only thing better than a wedding is scrapbooking the photos from the wedding! Here is another page from the wedding album I recently created for one of my clients.

The subject of weddings hit close to home for me this year. My oldest son, Rodrigo, married his sweetheart, Dianna, on June 14th, just over a week ago. It was a magical day and I can't even express how much I enjoyed it, and how happy I am to welcome Dianna into our family. I am so honored that they have asked me to do their wedding album! You can bet you'll see many layouts posted here on my blog as I create the album.

Jeff of Fassett Photography took the photos and will be providing them in digital form. More and more photographers are doing this so be sure to ask about this option if you are interviewing potential photographers for your own wedding. Receiving the photos in digital format saves scanning them later and also provides you the opportunity to print (or have printed) as many copies as you like, in whatever size you like, not to mention slipping them straight into digital photo album pages.

Even better -- let me do that for you! I can create one layout of your special day suitable for framing, or an entire album to preserve every detail and memory of the day. Or both! My style is clean and classy; perfect for wedding photos. Or, if you prefer, I can add all the embellishments and fancy journaling your heart desires, it's totally up to you.

Contact me now at deborah@webajeb.com for a special offer on wedding layouts!

Photo Enhancements

This is Scout, my little female orange tabby, who loves to help me sew. (For more photos of Scout during the construction of a "ragged" baby quilt for my niece, click here). I love this photo; however, the original version of the photo was a bit "washed out" (see below):

The original photo is nice . . . but the colors are just a tad washed out, whether from the light coming in the dining room window, or perhaps my camera settings were not perfect. Whatever the reason I was a teensy bit disappointed so I turned to PhotoShop CS3.

I only needed to do a little bit of color correction to add more vibrancy to the colors in Scout's coat and eyes, and in the fabric behind her. Much more true to life. Then, since it was so easy, I decided to make Scout's eyes a little more green by changing the hue just a bit and increasing the saturation. The result is a more striking photo.

I'd love to know what you think! Please leave a comment or email me at deborah@webajeb.com.

I can do this type of thing for you, too! If you have a very special photo that just needs a little boost, send it to me. I'll call you and we can discuss what kind of improvements I can make. It's amazing what a little color correction, cropping, removal of distracting backgrounds, and "healing" blemishes and wrinkles will do for your pictures.

Contact me today! Email me as above or call toll-free (866) 521-DIGI (3444).