point and click snapshot transformation

[Afox]

Before:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/60919582@N00/456266092/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/201/456266092_0370f5785e.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="DSCF0362_orginal" /></a>

After:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/60919582@N00/456251936/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/224/456251936_eb9ea38571.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Dylan after touchup" /></a>

I just got a copy of Photoshop CS2 and figured I'd try it out.

My wife took this with a cheap point and shoot digital camera one day while playing around with our son. She loved the expression on his face but was not happy with it so I figured I'd see what I could do with it.

I'm pretty happy with it for just starting with Photoshop as a total newb. Only thing I can think of that might work better is to blur out the background a bit more /shrug. Took me a few hours to figure out layer masks but what a powerful tool! Any suggestions or comments are more than welcome.

[wulf]

Nice work - very subtle but definitely enhancing the image as a sympathetic portrait. You could, perhaps, blur out the background a little more but at present it looks natural whereas it might start to become distracting if you ramped that effect up any more.

Wulf

[jiminyClickit]

Afox, Welcome

Unless you want to remember kitchen, I'd crop to portrait: from right, where shirt starts to bunch, over to left, where shirt drops behind knee. Then remove distracting dark items upper left (drawer). That will make your work stand out even more. Eyes are great.

[Afox]

Ahh good call. Crop tool was much easier to figure out than the layer and quick masks that's for sure. And here's the final (figured out some simple stuff like canvas size and stroke). fun fun.

Final with Crop and Mat/Border - not bad from a cheap point and shoot sony with forced flash.

Final:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/60919582@N00/456390372/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/202/456390372_14baefb908.jpg" width="423" height="500" alt="DSCF0362_crop_wborder" /></a>

[jiminyClickit]

Afox,

Bravo! Now your subject is beyond the snapshot, into well-done photograph.

There is another way: crop landscape, so your subject is featured in right half of that crop (top of knee, to his left shoulder in original). Not as good as this one, useful perhaps on some other photo.

[sana]

I'm also begginer in PS, just trying out things. Here i found a video tutorial for bluring background http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbIQXDjtSq0. I tried it out and it works - there is a trick how to avoid creating a whitish thin oreol around the subject (i noticed some of it here) and achieve a sharp edge. Hope you find it useful.
Nice picture. The edit looks good, still I like the color of eyes in the original better, in the edited photo they look a bit artificial.

[Afox]

Sweet video tutorial. If it was not 3:10am my time I'd be messing around with the extract function. In order to get my background blurry I just did a lens blur then created a graident so it was less blured at the bottom of the image and more as it went back. But this extract method would really clean up the lines. Thanks for the link!

[knickers71uk]

You could also easily adapt that video for Paintshop Pro X from at least versions 8 and up. I often convert phtoshop tutorials for psp. Just some info for psp users out there, were not all lucky enough to be able to afford Photoshop sadly, but surpringly I often can achieve the same results with psp as people can with photoshop at half the price, Lovely photo, beautiful eyes!

[mikem12188]

Beautiful work Afox. Again, it's not the camera....