Looking In - Before and After

   This is a before and after of a recent photo of mine.  As shown in the graphic, I used three textures by Shadow House Creation.  I shoot RAW and then use Adobe Camera Raw with Photoshop Elements 9 for Mac.
   For this photo I also used a B/W gradient map, boosting contrast.  Then I used a slight warming gradient map on his skin, leaving the background a slightly cooler tone.

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Quote of the Day:

      “Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”
          -  Louis L'Amour

Shhhh - Before and After

I really worked hard to rescue this photo and I think it turned out so well that I hate to show you the original.  I was using my fully-manual 200mm f2.8 and somehow completely over exposed this shot.  Also, he was standing next to a red truck that cast this awful red glow on the left side of his face.  Still, I wanted to see what could be done for the photo so here’s what I did:


    1. Applied a Black/White gradient map
    2. Adjusted the Levels, bringing up the blacks and lowering the mid-tones
    3. Very lightly dodged the highlights and burned the Shadows to further increase the shadows in specific areas
    4. Applied a very light warming filter
    5. Flattened and saved – Done!

Old Farm Windmill - Before/After

This is a photo of my Uncle John's windmill on his farm.  I remember climbing to the top of this windmill when.I was just a kid!  I recently visited them and was able to take a few pictures around the farm.

After:

Before:

Adjusted Saturation to around 50%
Adjusted Hue's to add warmth
ShadowHouse's Ruffed Up 10" - Multiply - 50%
Pareerica's Scratched Caramel Overlay Mode - 90%
Terry's Texture 3 - Multiply - 62% Opacity
Terry's Texture 3 - Darken Mode - 100% Opacity twice
and GhostBones' texture "Lost" - Overlay Mode - 57% Opacity

Mt. Rushmore - Before/After

I usually do not like to process my photos this heavily but for some reason, I liked the effect I got with this photo.

Here is the SOOC (straight out of camera) version:

I used PS Elements 7.

- Opened the image in RAW and made corrections for exposure, contrast, vibrance and clarity.
- Applied two textures from ShadowHouse Creations:
     - "Ruffed up 7" in Hard Light mode at 75% opacity
     - "Tone Texture 4" in Linear Light mode at 100% opacity
     - Slightly masked out a little texture on the faces of the monument
- Slightly adjusted Saturation for the individual color channels
- Flattened, resized for Web, and converted to Jpeg

And here is a side-by-side comparison: