Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Preview Day 4

Or… the post also known as let’s embarrass my older brother who came to spend time with his sister and niece (mooch off of sister and spoil niece). lol

SOOC – December 22, 2010 Princess Pudding and her Uncie

Editing – Curves Adjustment, Color Balance Adjustment, Reduce Noise, Red Eye Removal, Spot Healing (for the Pudding’s runny nose), soften a few spots, and sharpen a few spots. (Click for full size)

Special edit – My Four Hen’s Superb action from the Matchstick Collection (Click for full size)

Don’t forget to come and enter the Christmas Time photo contest for your chance to win a $20 gift certificate!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Preview Day 3 (an entry)

OK – so I’m editing this photo today for an entry to the Paper Mama’s Winter Photo Contest.
The Paper Mama
This photo is actually from February 2010, but a. I live in the South, have some pity on me, we don’t get it looking like winter too often outside and b. no SOOC shot, I was computerless at that point so I’m lucky to even have this version of the photo – and it has to be one of my favorite snow shots of the boyos ever.
Original I have – Prince Zoo & Prince Wild February 2010 (last photo is entry)
TaS122010a
Editing: apply texture at 40% opacity and blending mode of Color Burn, add gradient layer of 100% black at edges to 0% black at center, duplicate original photo and add a lens blur of 30 radius then clip into gradient then set gradient to Color Burn at 50%. (click to get full effect)
TaS122010b

 

Oh and back to add my bokeh photo for the Paper Heart Camera Bokeh Photos. :o) Click for full effect – and yeah it leads to my other Flickr account I’m just too lazy to upload it again. lol
DSCN9200
Don’t forget to come and enter the Christmas Time photo contest for your chance to win a $20 gift certificate!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Preview Day 2 (fixing bags under eyes)

Hey Prince Wild, pout much? lol From yesterday 12/17.
SOOC

Love his under eye luggage? lol My boys are like me and constantly look completely worn out. So today we will go over how to fix some of those under eye bags.
First things first lets take care of some basic editing. The first thing I’ll do is take care of the lighting since that picture is rather on the dark side. Since the room we were in was dark I’m not going to worry about making the dark background visible, just brightening up his face. Go to Layers>Adjustment Layer>Curves:
TaS121910b

Next, lets fix the color balance. His skin and shirt has just a touch of a green tint so we’ll fix that by going to Layers>Adjustment Layer>Color Balance:
TaS121910cd

After this I’ll do skin softening, and eye pop, both of those tutorials can be found on The Coffee Shop blog.

The skin softening took care of some of the baggage, but it’s still there just a tad. So what we’ll do now is select the magnetic lasso, set the feather to 10 and use it to go around the worst parts of the bags. After they are selected press CTRL+J to put them in their own layer. Then go to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Color Balance. Click OK without adjusting then select the adjustment layer in your layers and right click it and select create clipping mask into the layer with the bags. Double click the adjustment box and  move the sliders until you get a nice greenish tint.
TaS121910g
TaS121910h

Select the bag layer (not adjustment) and change your blending mode to Soft Light and set your opacity to somewhere between 20 – 40. (Mine is at 30)
TaS121910i
And that’s it I’m done! I’ll use the Healing tool to clean up his face some but that’s really it. Here’s a split view of SOOC and edit and then the full edit. :o)

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Photo Contest: Christmas Time

OK, I am so excited to bring you all the very first photo contest on the blog!!
This one will be slightly different than ones to come, for starters you have much longer than just a week to get your entry in, you have until 11:59 pm (CST) January 1st. Also, this one will be randomly drawn with many chances to enter, while later ones will not – they will be winners based on the photos. But since this first contest is mainly to get you all to the blog and get the word out I’m doing it differently. I don’t have any buttons yet so please just make sure you link up the contest in your entry. :o)
This week’s theme is: Christmas Time
It doesn’t have to be actual Christmas Day pictures or such, just a photo dealing with something Christmas related.
Want to know what you’re entering for?? I am so so so excited to tell you that this contest is being sponsored by My Four Hens Photography!! Sarah has very generously offered a $20 gift certificate to her store to the winner of this challenge. Sarah’s actions are just beautiful, and a wonderful tool to have in your photo editing. Not to mention she’s an awesome photographer and just a super sweet lady all around. Here are some of my favorite actions of by her:
M4H-tool-box-preview
Glory-preview
little-boy-retro-preview
I bet you’re wondering how to enter right? Well, here’s how to get your entries:
  • Post your entry to the photo contest on your blog placing a direct link to this photo contest in your blog post. Make sure after you do that you come back and place your entry post into the Linky attached to this post.
  • Become a Follower of the blog, there’s a Followers tab up top under the blog name. (If I’m not already – I’ll follow you back.) Make sure you also click the Follow on the side of the main page of the blog so you’ll be updated about new posts. Along with contests, once a week I’ll walk you through editing a picture.
  • Make sure you become a fan of My Four Hens’ Facebook Fan Page.
  • Follow the blog on Twitter and on Facebook.
  • Comment with what action(s) you would buy with the $20 gift certificate if you win it.
  • Share the link to the blog on Facebook and Twitter and come back and post the link to the post there.
Each of those counts as one entry. BUT NOTE: If you do not do the photo none of your entries will count! Make sure you leave a separate comment for each entry. You can read the few rules I have regarding the photo contests here.
Deadline is January 1, 2011 11:59 pm Central Standard time. 
And lastly, here is my Christmas photo!
TaS121610a
I edited it with My Four Hens Nearly Black and White from her Retro Summer collection.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Preview Day 1

The Mom Queen and Princess Pudding 12/14/10
SOOC

Editing – Crop, Curves Adjustment, Brightness/Contrast Adjustment, Color Balance Adjustment, Sharpen, Selective Sharpening, Skin Smoothing, Reduce Noise
 
Special Edit using the Tiger Lily photo action (@ 80% opacity) from On The Spot Studio’s Flower Power action set.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

A preview of things to come.

Each day, with my daily photo, I’ll try to post both the original SOOC photo and the final edit, along with a list of things I did to the photo to achieve the edit. Once a week I will go into detail on the editing process, I will basically walk you step-by-step through the full edit with me. Here is a preview of that. Enjoy. :o) I’ll be editing with CS3.
I don’t know about you, but I hate taking pictures in the gym at the boys’ school. My pictures just never ever seem to turn out right or even slightly usable. Last Friday the boys had their Multi-Cultural Christmas Program at school, and even though I knew the pictures would suck, I knew I had to at least try to take some. I have to imagine my photos look about like the pictures most parents take at school stuff. Grainy because of the low lighting and being too far to use a flash. Blurry because kids do not sit still – especially not en masse. And lastly, with that funny tint that all school gyms seems to give photos. I swear, when people are in the planning stages of creating gyms, they purposely make them in a way that gives you sucktacular photos.
TaS121410aHere is the original photo, zoomed in 100% and cropped so that the focus is on Prince Wild. (Not the crop I plan to use – this is just to show you the graininess and details – or lack thereof) His grade covered Native American winter rituals and sang “10 Little Indians” (though he swore for two weeks it was “6 Little Indians” and the song went “1 little, 2 little, 6 little Indians. 6 little Indian boys and girls.”)
First things first, lets fix that Bob awful tint. It kinda makes me want to puke just a tad…
Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layers>Color Balance. You’ll want to pull each color set away from the color closest to your tint just a tad, and then the one that has the tint color in it (Magenta and Green in this case) move it in the oposite direction as much as possible without creating a new funky color problem.
TaS121410c

Now, lets adjust our lighting curves just a tad.
Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves. Now, my lighting isn’t really all that bad, so as you’ll be able to tell in the image, I just barely adjusted them. The top of the curve is your highlight, mid is about the midtones (this will generally effect the overall lightness and darkness, not just parts, of the picture), and towards the bottom you have your shadows.
TaS121410e

Select your background layer, zoom in 100%, then go to Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise. Remember this, you probably will not need as much of this part as I do, my photo is very grainy, and I have no intention of printing this photo at a large size. Reduce Noise is both good and bad, it reduces the noise (graininess) but you also lose some of your details and create a sort of flat look – especially if you use it a lot. This will not take a bad photo and make it great, it will take a bad photo and make it tolerable – or good if kept small.
TaS121410g
I’m actually going to apply those settings to my photo TWICE. But look at it on the original size and then again on the size I plan to print at (100% SOOC size – 100% print size):
TaS121410h TaS121410i
I’m decreasing the photo size a lot. The trick to figure out about how much detail will come in at print size is to get a tape measurer (or ruler) and zoom in/out of your picture until the width of the picture matches the width amount you’re printing at on the tape measurer.
That’s all I’m doing to this picture! :o) Here’s a split view of the SOOC and final edit.
 

Monday, December 6, 2010

Getting everything set up!

OK, hi all and welcome to Tutus and Sneakers!
This will be my 365 Photos blog, and I’ll also run weekly photo contests. I’m in the process of looking for people to help sponsor the contests. I’ll also be more than glad to offer ad space on the side of the blog to people who have business based in photography related things, and women who run their own stores (non-photo related). If you’re interested send me an email at tutusandsneakers@gmail.com with your button, a link to your site, and a little about what you do. If you’re interested in sponsoring a contest please let me know, if you’d like I can even have you as a guest judge for the contest.
Please, pass on the link to the blog! I’d love to get as many people interested as possible. :o)
A little about me:
I’m the Mom Queen. A young stay-at-home mom and photo-taking junkie. I have three kids, Prince Zoo, Prince Wild, and Princess Pudding.

Testing, testing, 1... 2… 3

Just ignore me please… just wanting to test a first post out.