Photo editing

[breakinglight11]

So as you may remember, I wanted a headshot board outside the theater for To Think of Nothing. Bernie took the headshots on my stupid point-and-shoot camera, and though they came out by and large okay, I wanted them to look really slick. Black and white was an obvious option, but then I started messing around on Adobe Photoshop Elements to see if I couldn't make them a little crisper. I took forever trying to teach myself the rudiments of the program-- as I said, it's a good thing Liz Baessler is so cute, because I spent hours staring at her headshot. I mostly messed with the contrast, the shadows, and the brightness, but I also figured out how to smooth out small imperfections like flyaway hairs, under-eye circles, and acne. I actually think I got pretty decent, if decidedly uneducated and unprofessional, at editing photos such that they looked pretty good in one way or another. 

Yesterday, in the depth of my doldrums, I decided to amuse myself by playing around with some other photos. Since I was depressed, I indulged myself by using pictures of my favorite subject-- myself. I made myself a new profile pic out of the shot of me in my Halloween costume posted in thefarowl's Facebook album. I then took it a step further and upped the blue content to make the color of my costume seem richer and to cool down the brightness of my skin and the wall behind me. I actually think I like that version, which I posted on DeviantART, better than the one I used in my profile.

I also decided to challenge myself by taking a picture of myself that I hated and making it into something that I liked. nennivian had an album of shots she took at a girls night dinner we had, and I was shocked at my acne-blotched skin tone and unbelievable helmet hair. So I put it in grayscale, cut the frame in tight, erased my acne, and played with the contrast levels until I got something that looked kind of soft and artistic. Here is the end result:
 

It reminds me of those pictures people use on the last pages of retrospectives about the life of some famous dead person. Heh, when I die horribly and young, as I'm certain I will, and somebody does a book about me, here's a nice shot for the end.

Comments

[arthoniel.livejournal.com]

I think my icon pretty much says it all about what I think of the photo there.

I mean, damn, girl. Also, at some point, you gotta show me how to do all that myself. I, too, have Photoshop... but I've used it mostly for cropping, collages, and text. It'd be nice to know how to do the kind of stuff you talk about here as well.