Karen contacted me via my Contact Me page. I was super excited to hear from her because we were October 2009 brides together. She sent me a challenge: a picture of her dog, Pugsly, taken on her point and shoot.
I’ll be honest, I had a few issues…one of which was that I don’t have noiseware. I NEED NOISEWARE! So, if you’re reading this…please recommend your noiseware. So, rather than trying to fight it…I added texture.
In order to achieve my after, I went through the following steps:
- Cropped the photo, making it a 4×6.
- Ran Coffeeshop’s Orton action. This gave it a softer glow (and a little less noise).
- Ran Nelly Nero’s Vintage Dream action (I have downloaded all 25 of her PSE actions, Vintage Dream is one of the actions in that set).
- At this point, I applied a series of textures. Check out this tutorial. To be honest with you, I’m not sure his links are working, but definitely check out Shadowhouse Creations for incredible textures and application tips. Meanwhile, I still owe a tutorial on choosing photos for texture application.
- Finally, (before preparing the photo for the blog) I applied a 20% vignette and used Pioneer Woman‘s Slight Light action for PSE.
Also, I’m considering opening up Before & After’s for everyone’s contribution (similar to I Heart Faces). If this is something that anyone is interested in, please leave me a comment with your suggestions for how this might work. Perhaps you guys can submit challenge photos…then I can post one picture a week to be worked on. I’ll add a mclinky and everyone can post their Before & After, including me.
I don’t know…I don’t want to discourage us to build our photography skills, but I also think we could inspire and learn from each other. Like I said, leave me some feedback. Or if you have other ideas for challenges, themes, etc, leave me a comment about that too.
I’ll quit rambling – I’m heading to a wedding this afternoon. Don’t forget the global photography challenge tomorrow morning.
