Good to Wow - Shoot & Edit - UP

SOOC

Texture:  warmsun by Kim Klassen

The theme for this week's Good to Wow was "up."
It's a beautiful day here and I thought I'd head out and take an "up" shot, but my battery needs to be charged!  Then, I remembered that a couple weeks ago, I had snapped some shots of our first spring buds.  

I googled "spring quotes" and found this one...fitting for the day this photo was taken.

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Good to Wow - Edit - Green

{before}

Now, that's GREEN!  While I like the perspective of this photo, the quality of focus was off and the table looked more "blue" than reality.  This edited version is still not a great sample - I did a real hack job of cloning out stuff in the background (I kept forgetting what layer I was working on).  But I love how adding a layer with a green fill (blended) bumped up the green.  Again, I did a rushed job of erasing out the filter on all parts but the table.  It was easy to do the balls, though, as the brush "fit nicely" over them.

{before}

I just loved this photo of my son playing in the mud, but it was a bit washed out.  I applied a soft light blend and Ashley Sisk's "Nice and Easy" action and adjusted hue and saturation.  I backed it off on the orange in his boots a bit and in the yellow gloves.  Love how the mud looks shiny and gushier!

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Good To Wow - SOOC - Green

My son LOVES pool!

And mud!

See my edited versions here.

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http://sugarsnaps.blogspot.com/2011/04/good-to-wow-edit-green.html

Good to Wow - Edit - Flowers!

For the orchid, I applied some adjustment levels, cropped and painted out the stem on left.
Still playing with"clean edit" process (I'll have to go back to the old lessons.)

For this next image, I wanted so badly to use the Pixel Bender's Oil Painting filter that Ashley references. I did download the "stand alone" toolkit and had some fun with it, but didn't see that filter available.  So, I hit google and in trying to find a way to apply that filter, I found a tutorial on the "liquify" filter in Photoshop.

(Filter, Distort, Liquify)

I'm not entirely pleased with this result, but I was just playing with it and was happy to find that it may take a little more time and effort, but I could mimic the Pixel Bender oil painting.

Updated:  Since I've put kids to bed, I played again with the Nice & Easy Action (it wasn't loading for me earlier, but I got it...and love it!)  This shot still fits the "flowers" theme - just check out her fleece shirt!

I also "cloned" away some boo-boos, and used the lasso tool to highlight then lighten teeth and eyes.

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Good to Wow - SOOC - Flowers!

I'm going to jump in on this weekly challenge.  For this week, they ask for SOOC (straight out of camera) shots of flowers!  Yes, Spring has officially sprung!  I don't have flowers to photograph yet, luckily I keep a lot of "flower shots"  saved for just such occasions.  I'll decide later which one of these I'll edit later in the week for the second part of the challenge.

 

See my edited versions here.