Playing with Photoshop

So, this is my new addiction! I was playing around with Adobe Photoshop and just loved the results. I use Photoshop to adjust color intensity and lighting/contrast, but I hadn't really played around with the artistic media before. Now I'm hooked.

I love how this pic of Earle's mum turned out. I used the effect dry brush to achieve the painterly quality and then I intensified the colors and added a spotlight lighting effect. If I sent if off, electronically, to have it printed onto canvas it would look just like a painting. Earle is such a great photographer. He always gives me plenty of subject matter to work from. A good deal of my paintings that I've done from photos have been from his camera. We went down to breakfast over the surprise birthday weekend and the lighting was so wonderful that he immediately flew back up to the room for his camera to snap this shot.

I actually took this one myself. I wanted a new pic for my profile on the homeschool boards. Again, I used the soft lighting coming in through the window to soften the lines on this getting-older face of mine. This photoshop technique is called cutout.

Here's a more edgy version of me made with indexed mode. Earle likes this one. He is a big fan of black and white.

Another pic manipulated with cut out. I also intensified the colors and adjusted the lighting. It reminds me of a 1950's paint-by-number.

My little girly! I used watercolor effect on one of her graduation pics. Doesn't she look amazing? I think I might print this one out on card stock paper. I'll bet it would look quite close to a hand painted watercolor.

Another lovely pic done with the watercolor effect. Not as pretty as the flower just above, but still an nice pic.

After the usual color and lighting adjustments I used a brushstroke effect called ink outlines to achieve this look. I really like the faux paint/pen and ink look it gave the pic.

Wow, I need to get back to homeschooling! This has been a really fun little rabbit trail to go down for a while. I think I'll be using these techniques again. Have you ever played with your pics before? What results did you come up with? If not, give it a try. You'll enjoy it.