Lights, Camera, Action.

Today I was introduced to a website ran by a lady who calls herself Pioneer Woman who lives in the country in America somewhere. She is a wonderful photographer and she is very friendly. Her website has many tutorials on how to use Photoshop and she has even given a link to download some free actions into Photoshop. These actions were very useful and I have been experimenting with them today. There is so much that goes into the actions and they are so simple to use! Her website is http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/2008/10/to-celebrate-the-point-and-shoot/ make sure you check her out if you are into photography because she is a wonderful photographer.

Here is a before and after of an image I edited using one of the actions and also a tutorial given by this wonderful lady.

Before editing:

Image taken by Ken Pegg http://www.prosperos-book.info/ I have permission to use this image for anything, I am the model.

After using the actions 'Ethereal' and 'Boost' Boost, enhances the colour and Ethereal makes the picture seem dreamy. I then used the gaussian blur filter to make me blurry and used a layer mask to delete the effect from my hair, skin and clothing. This made the background blurry putting more emphasis on me as the model.

After:

My skin tone and the colours are all enhanced and I think the overall picture is stronger.

I am going to do alot more experimentation with these new actions and will probably post more images later on in the blog.

There is much more colour in my skin and my eyes which makes me stand out more.

I have also learnt about HDR images which are basically a series of images which are put together all of the same subject, at different exposures and the effects are really cool! I will have to save up and buy Photomatic before I can learn how to do this technique.

Here is an image that has been edited using HDR. The website says 'feel free to use pictures, but with credits and links' so the credit goes to the person who owns the image and the website link is http://stuckincustoms.com/2006/06/06/548/


this is one of the images they has taken using this technique:



It's amazing what you can find on the internet.

I think this picture is very beautiful even though the colours arent balanced. This is not a conventional image but I love the effect!

Well that's it for today's post, I'm quite tired so I'll probably go to bed soon.
Thanks for reading :]