The Magic of Young Love

[shutternut]

This was my first attempt ever using a texture... pretty much my first true attempt using layers and my first time trying to create sparkles. They are a couple I know that just got married, and I wanted to do something special with one of the photos I took of them. The only thing I don't like is the sparkle trail at the top right that leads off frame.. otherwise I'm pretty happy with my try. Hope you all enjoy it too!

The butterfly texture was courtesy of this flickr user: http://www.flickr.com/people/emeraldrose/

This was the base shot for everything...





Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture: f/5.0
Focal Length: 43 mm
Exposure: 0.00
ISO Speed: 800
...and some CS3

[angeleyes216]

Thats really pretty and something i havent seen before ..can you explain how you did it. Im sure they will love it.

[saltytostitos]

Love the photo! A very nice texture! Beautiful!

[shutternut]

Thanks angeleyes and saltytostitos!

For the sparkles I just followed this tutorial - it's all really straightforward: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/p...fects/sparkle/

As for the rest, I pretty much pulled the guy and girl from the original photo into their own new layer by highlighting them and then hitting Ctrl + J. I adjusted some things on them using surface blur to smooth out skin and hide some noise, and hue saturation to tone down the orange/yellow color that was on them. I boosted the contrast a little to make them stand out a little more too. I put a solid color beneath them, a light orange/yellow color to blend with the texture. I layered the butterfly texture on top, and then erased through to blend them into the frame. There may have been a few minor tweaks aside from that (I think I blended a little more blue into his eye because the color was washed out), but otherwise those are pretty much the steps I followed.

[windrider86]

I have that texture as well. It can be used for soooooooo many things. You did agreat job making a snapshot into something far more meaningful