Photo Story

Here's my final project photo story. Enjoy!

Week 11: Portraits!

I actually like shooting portraits. Self portraits are a different matter, though. Boy is it hard to get decent shots with a timer! I took a few today and will be working on a few more this week, hopefully. I created the fake depth of field using a gaussian blur, a layer mask, and the gradient tool. The new hair color is not from Gimp... it's from a bottle. :)


This one is done in a more traditional pose. He was a really good sport about it.


I took these at the playground. I was having fun using the equipment as a way to frame the shots.

Week 10: Watermark

Hey guys... this photo uses a combo of anisotropic smoothing, unsharp mask (only on the feet), and dodging and burning to get the effects I wanted. In the future, I'll make the "dodged" background for the text smaller and closer to the actual words. It's a little too obvious for my tastes.

Week 10: Clone Tool and Heal Tool

Hey guys... I've been feeling under the weather lately, otherwise I'd have posted earlier in the week. This is a photo I took of my son playing ball with his buddy. The original had a shed directly behind the ball, which made the ball kind of blend in with it.

I lassoed and copied the ball to a new layer, then I cloned the bushes from the far right and put them over the shed area. Then I merged the layers and the ball dropped in over the bushes. I think it shows up much better now.

The original:


Edited:


Gimp's Heal tool is the closest I found to PS Patch tool. In this photo, I smoothed out my gnarly hand a bit. My hands have looked like this for a long time-- I was a reflexologist for years and they just ended up this way.

Original:


Edited:

More Filters

This one was mega work. I had the wrong ISO setting for the lighting outside and it really shows in the original. So I downloaded the G'MIC console for Gimp (you can get it here) and ran the Anisotropic Smoothing filter on E's face and hand. I used layers and paintbrush to "burn" his face and hand, too. I used Gaussian blur to blur the background a bit. It's still not perfect, but it will never be because the original is not great to begin with.

Original:


New:

Week 9: Filters

Here's another photo altered in Gimp. I used the Sparkle and Supernova filters on it. For the sparkle, I used the lasso tool and only selected the earring to add a little bling to that area.

I also used the layers and paintbrush technique to "dodge and burn" certain areas. The bottom of the couch was "burned" and I dodged parts of her face (the glisten on her lips and around her eyes). I was going for an ethereal effect. Another doctored photo to come after this, so check back!

The original:


New:

Week 9: Dodge and Burn

Hi guys. Here's a photo I altered in Gimp. I followed this tute: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/dodge-burn/ I also used the instructions to overlay a warmer (rust color) tone for the picture.

Original:


Altered: