Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Week 22 good to WOW Edit Bubbles

Thursday means time to go to Ashley's blog and learn a new step in editing and link our edits up.  I am looking forward to seeing what every one did with their bubbles.




These edits were some of the easiest and the hardest...ever.  For one thing, simple clean edits are getting fairly easy.  Ashley's Nice and Easy or MCP mini-fusion Actions give me all the layers I need and then I just make a few adjustments and  am done.  I rarely open my JPG in ACR now because it is most helpful (since I am not shooting in RAW yet) in correcting white balance and exposure and a lot of times I just don't need to adjust that (mostly because I take so many pictures why keep the ones that "need saving"?).  So that is the easy part.  The hard part is that because my photos were somewhat abstract they just begged for some creative editing.  After all what does one do with a whole bunch of colored bubbles if not create something?  I'll admit I went a little crazy, but I had a lot of fun.  So here goes.

Here is just a simple basic edit.  (You may mouseover all photos for SOOC).
I think it kind of looks like a black hole would, which is silly since black holes would be black, but it is what my mind envisions.  Maybe they did fake the moon landing with rocks and bubble pictures...just kidding!

Now I won't bore you with every clean edit, but you can assume the differences were similar to the above picture--a little more contrast and darker darks and brighter colors.  So how about some text?
Did you notice how I horizontal flipped the image so the blank space for text is on the left instead of the right?

Okay, so this next one I just stuck to the basics because I realized the focus was not quite right.  Wouldn't have thought it mattered, but it does.  Makes me a little sad because I kind of liked the teal all by itself.

Okay, I got a little silly on this next one...and the one after it.  Feel free to skip...or giggle with me.
This is poster edges with some text and text bubbles.  Not difficult to do, but not something I have much call to use.  Kind of fun to play with it today.

Someone wondered how these bubble pictures would work as a texture.  They really aren't ideal for use on a flower but isn't that the only thing we can use textures on?  No?  Well, it is what I used the last photo for anyway.  The mouseover is the clean edit; not the original.
I thought it might be an interesting way to make a natural vignette, but in softlight not 100% opacity the black edges kind of faded away.  It's not really my style, but it just goes to show how many different things one can do.  I was not interested in trying them all.

Only 3 photos left.  Hang in there. 
Since I used a square crop I didn't use the mouse over effect here so no original.  Basically just cropped out some of the distractions and ran MCP mini-fusion.  I also added a burn layer at 24% opacity.  I tried BW and some other things, but nothing brought the bubbles out from the background which is the main issue I have with this picture.  Oh well.  I just love having proof that my boys can work in unison together happily.  Sometimes they forget.

So I waited to edit this photo when I read that Ashley would teach us how to render bubbles.  I realized the reason I liked it was because it kind of looked like he was in a bubble they way everything was a little distorted except for his face and the bubble he was blowing.  I thought perhaps I could render a bubble for him to be in.  Turned out I don't have the patience to do so.  I did render a bubble and put in his reflection, but I couldn't blend it all together very well.  I didn't want to start over so I turned into a painting with PSE Filters--Artistic--Rough Pastels.  It is becoming one I do like to do just for fun.
It doesn't cover all of my sloppiness, but it looks a little more intentional. :)

This last photo turned out to be my absolute favorite.  It isn't exactly WOW SOOC but the bubble is in focus AND it has some fun sunflares that I didn't originally notice.  Now that I've edited it, I love it.  I then tried different actions on it, and I loved them all.  Since it is a bubble, the color didn't really matter.  Every one was fun and pretty. Which is the hard part.  I cannot save 30 permutations of the same bubble.   I'm just going to give you the basic edit with a crop and a blue tint.
For another edit of this bubble feel free to check out my Scripture and a Snapshot post.  I really like it, too.
Photobucket

13 comments:

Joanna said...

These truly are a WOW! Nice job on all of these, I especially love those strong colors :D

Ashley Sisk said...

These are really creative. I especially love the last shot.

Susan said...

It looks like you had some fun this week. Love the creative edits, and that last bubble shot is a wow. Nice work!

Unknown said...

LOVE the last shot!!!!

Gina Kleinworth said...

I love how creative you got with these- great job!

Rosie@leavesnbloom said...

Great job on all of these Cedar but the last one is my favourite - now there isn't by any chance the slightest bit of pixel bender in that bubble is there as it sure looks like there's some lovely bending going on inside that bubble.

Amarie said...

Ohhhh! Love the last shot! Thanks for visiting :-).

Courtney said...

LOTS of creativity going on in these. Fantastic! Absolutely LOVE the last shot.

Unknown said...

I *LOVE* that last shot!! :D

And the poster one made me laugh. :D

Anonymous said...

That last shot is so amazing! I love how it just sparkles.

I also like how you used the shot as a texture.

Jessaca said...

Love those last two shot!! Very creative!!

Anonymous said...

Oh wow! Great edits. I LOVE that last one!

Leovi said...

Beautiful photos. Very nice, a very creative process. Greetings.