What you would do (#1)

[Angela]

You people are amazing and highly skilled in making changes.

I aspire to be photoshop proficient like the lot of you one day!

[tzimmerman]

Here is my attempt, just a crop, rainbow, and subtle eye enhancement.

To do the rainbow.....I created a new layer, and use the gradient tool with the rainbow selection in a radial gradiant to make the curve, then I duplicated the background layer....erased out the area behind her.

Eye enhancement I used a technique I found in another forum, i saved their instructions.

It's called "Eye Pop". You do it in photoshop with a layer mask. You duplicate the layer and change the style to color dodge- or any that look good (just look at the eyes- ignore everything else). Then "Layer". "Layer Mask", "Hide all". Change your forground color to white, select a brush and start painting away at those eyeballs. The layer that you masked will start to show up. Fiddle with opasity and hardness until you get the result you want.



I love the idea to this forum.....I am very novice in retouching and using layer masks and stuff......I think there is an easier way to select a background and erase it out but I just go use my eraser and feather it alot :P. Looking forward to learning alot on how to use masks and such.

[xxpinballxx]

I like it! SO far for a starter thread this one is going pretty well if I must say so myself. Now just waiting to see someone really turn it into something else entirely!

[Teewinot]

tzimmerman...I like it too! It works so well with the umbrella and the girl's eyes peering beyond!

[jmadigan]

Wow, very cool everyone. Keep 'em coming!

I like the special effects, but I'm kind of surprised nobody has taken the tract of just making an improved traditional photo. If I can post about my own photo, here's what I did along those lines:

Original, out of camera:



After post processing:



Step 1. I started off thinking the whole thing was kind of overexposed and undersaturated. So I used Adobe Camera Raw to make some global changes to contrast and saturation. I also selectively boosted the saturation in the magenta range to make her raincoat and umbrella pop.

Step 2. This made the background way too saturated and contrasty, though, so I brought it into Photoshop and created curves and hue/saturation adjustment layer masks using the lasso tool and paintbrushes. These I used to desaturate and darken the background.

Step 3. I then wanted her purple umbrella to stand out a little more, so I created another hue/saturation layer mask to tweak that.

Step 4. Next, I thought her face was a little dark, thanks to being under the umbrella. So I created a final curves adjustment layer mask and brightened it a bit.

Step 5. Finally, I used the clone stamp tool to clone out the little bit of metal at the top left of the umbrella, because I found it distracting.

But like I said, I like the other special effects showing up here too. I also really like the crop in tzimmerman's entry. If I were to do it over again I'd do a similar one.

[Nicole]

Of course you can edit your own photos No reason why not

[tzimmerman]

Wow....those are 2 completely different photos. I wish I knew how to improve saturation and contrast like that.....my camera doesn't shoot in raw so I will have to figure out how to do it in photoshop.

[jiminyClickit]

From first look, it appeared the eyes were unusually turned in, so that's where I concentrated effort. Started with a portrait crop, but when zooming in, this area seemed essentially "her." The eyes were redefined by brush, catchlight repositioned, eye on left lightened, left side of face darkened some.

[xxpinballxx]

nice jiminy thats where I would concentrate and edit too the eyes. I hope to get my computer working today so I can edit this one.

[xxpinballxx]

okay I got my computer somewhat working...here is my first attempt
I cropped out what i didnt want to see then dodged out the umbrella mast and some of the white sky on the right side of the pic.
Also there were a couple hairs standing out to me so got rid of them. I then softened and adjusted levels a bit.
I softened the total image which I think took away some from her eyes but gave it a more soft "child-like" photo.