Photo Shoot and Photoshop

I've wanted to sit down and do a photoshoot for some time, taking some fun pictures and just play around with them. Well, I did have better things to do but I decided to just go with it.

I wanted to take pictures of me outside my comfort zone, get all dressed up and funked out and do something with the hair and makeup and all that jazz. My sister has a talent for it so she asked if I wanted to get some pictures and I was all 'heck yeah!'

But half of the fun after the photoshoot is manipulating the pictures later. I decided to do something a little different with each one. All of these pictures are taken with a simple snap and shoot camera.

Photoshop is a beautiful, beautiful thing.


This was actually the last picture we took, but it's one of my favorites. I like the punk rocker feel to it. Manipulation was simple. Wiped out all color by desaturizing the pic, then messed with the levels to bring the whites and the blacks out.

For this pic, I made an exact replica of it over the original and gave that a soft light tag. Then between the two layers I placed another that was a dark purple to give it the purple hue cast to it.


This is the punk rocker chick with to much eye makeup look, but I really think this was the only picture to come out without me looking like a crack whore. Two layers, like the previous file, the top file is in cutout and put on Multiply so the bottom layer comes through to give it its color.


I really liked this image and just wanted it to look really bright. I auto-colored it to take the blue cast given by the camera out and then went to the Match Color windo and put everything at maxed out. It's helpful to have a lot of color in the picture to begin with to let this pop out.


I can't for the life of me remember what I did to get this affect. But it wasn't hard and with plenty of playing around in the gloriousness that is photoshop, it isn't that hard to produce. It had some filters involved though, this I know.


I just wanted to whitewash this one out to bring out my very angsty eyeballs that I'm quite known for. Two identicle layers, the top one is on Overlay and using the curve tool, I tweeked it until I got the look I wanted.


The punk rocker outfit, in an action pose that I really liked so I took it and played a bunch until I got it to look like this. There are actually four layers involved, the bottom layer is the original untouched picture, there is a grayscale pic in the layer on top of that that is set at 30% opacity, a color fill filtered in with color dodge at 70% opacity, and the top image is me messing with the selective color, and then putting it at a soft light filter at 80% opacity. It just sounds a lot more difficult then it really is.

I love those boots. That top isn't as flattering as I originally thought however, its actually to big for me.


Another visit to that punk rocker chick, I wanted the look that it was a black and white image with color added as an afterthought, or rather the color was really toned down. I took a double layer and made the top gray scale with a Multiply filter and took the bottom layer through the hue/saturation and desaturated the color a little bit. I also messed around with teh levels, to bring out the blacks and the whites.


This effect is actually quite simple. Take it through gradient map and pick your colors. Viola, this is what comes out. It helps to have very pronounced lights, darks, and minimum midrange for this to really be effective with the pic.


I really like working with multiple levels, the top level is done with an artistic filter of sketch pencil and put on color burn over an untouched picture. It helps to auto color both before you begin.


This picture looked zen to me, and I wanted to put it to some nice bright cheerful colors. Yes, I took the picture, desaturated teh color out of it so it was in grayscale, messed with the levels to bring out the blacks and whites, and then put a gradient under it. You could have done a hundred and one things with the image under it, but this was a default gradient and if I wanted to, I could have messed with it a little more to get a better color combination. Hmm, maybe I'll try something else another time.

I've got a gob more pictures, and I think I'll try some different things with them. But the one thing I've discovered about Photoshop is that you just have to mess with it, try things and see if they work or if they don't. Sometimes they do, sometimes its a disaster, but that's why you back up your files and just go to town. I loveloveloveloveLOVE this software because there is so much you can do with it. I hope you enjoyed my loony pictures, and if you don't understand what I said to get the affects, I guess ignore my little commentary. I'll probably put up some more later.