Thursday, February 3, 2011

THE PESKY DONKEY

I stumbled upon a website this week that was having a theme challenge. I am new to the realm of professional photography and have come to love these types of challenges because it makes you try something new and outside the box. These challenges are helping me learn more about Adobe Photoshop CS4, which by the time I die I may have a grasp of 10% of it! Of course I will need a new version and I will be back to dumb, but I keep trying and plugging away. 

This weeks challenge with Good to WOW Photo Thursday was the theme "red." I am pretty sure I am the only person with a donkey. That is pretty typical of my life. Most people have cute composed hearts and children and I have a freaking donkey. Just for the record, he is not my donkey, but we have become fast friends the past few weeks as I have driven by his home. He often gets out of his pasture and then I have to shoo him off the road and he sticks his head in my car and I laugh at him. I am certain it wouldn't be as amusing if he were my donkey.

SOOC

Anyhow, I just snapped this picture as he withdrew his head from my car window last week. When I first began to edit it, I loved the bright red pipe fence adjacent to him. Here is what I did with Photoshop: PW Actions; slight lighten, boost, Vintage and removed the grain, extra oldness and black and white. I bumped down the warm tone, midtone bump and contrast torture. I also backed off the edge burn and blur. Then I used the hue/saturation as covered in Ashley's blog today to adjust the red. Finally I did a high definition from MCP Actions.

FINAL PRODUCT
I really have no clue what I am doing but thanks to tutorials, challenges and demonstrations, I am having fun playing and slowly learning.




Tuesday, February 1, 2011