58. Blue Heron

For the first time, I used selective color to boost the heron's beak and the tree's leaves.  I also sharpened the image some, making his eye more in focus.

original

57. Conversing

To make this photograph more dramatic, I created a new layer, filled it with black and erased the unneeded background.  You can see the bottom line of the photograph where the original color remains. A classic example of me needing to zoom out, ensuring I process the entire area.

56. Tiled Painting

55. Smiley Face

Using the same set of photos I took a few Thanksgivings ago in #54, I combined two images, duplicated the wooden posts and erased revealing the red leaves beneath.

54. Peeping Tom

I combined two images to make both images more interesting.

The originals:

53. Spot Healing Brush

For the first time I used the spot healing brush to retouch the wire mesh and various brush from the original photo.

the original photo taken at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, I titled, "Wired."

52. Palette Knife Filter

I used my landscape photo of a tree's water reflection, boosted the saturation and vibrance and then applied the palette knife filter.

original

51. Wax Figure

Using a self portrait I took last year.  I duplicated the layer, applied an orange filter, created another layer and used the chrome filter, blending them both with the color option.  I think it looks like dripping wax.

50. Purple Haze

Here is an example of me not documenting my experiments.  I wish I could tell you exactly what I did, but I know I added a cloud filter on the next to last layer at the end after color tweaking, duplicating layers, erasing, and ?

original

49. Richmond Reflection

Here I used the original image of downtown Richmond's canal walk, duplicated the layer, covered it in blue and erased it to reveal the original image beneath.

original

48. Dancer

Dancer enhanced with glowing edges filter and playing with vibrance and individual color saturations.

before

47. Cut-Out

Tonight, I duplicated the first layer, erased the background.  Experimented with different colored brushes and sizes, then duplicated the layer again and used the cut-out filter at 64% opacity.

Here is the original photo:

the experiment:

46. Leaf

before

after

45. Pin-Ups

Today, I turned a color image black and white, played with the brightness and contrast, and added a blue filter.

before:

I did the same for this photo except I hand colored the lips red. 

 Result: Vampy.

This isn't what I was planning to do.  I found a video teaching me about "actions" in PS, that I thought I could teach myself. WRONG! I will go back and learn more tomorrow.

The original:

44. Haystack Rock

I haven't really gotten into using the curves for color and contrast correction, so I was happy when I found a simple way to make photos pop, by simply duplicating the layer and changing the blending mode to soft light.  

Keep duplicating layers until the desired effect is achieved.  If you want further tweaking, you can adjust the opacity from 100% to whatever you are comfortable with.

before:

43. Creating Infrared Photos in Photoshop

before:

Special thanks to this video for teaching me.

So fun, I had to do one more:

before:

42. Faking Depth of Field

Using this video, I created a shallow depth of field.  This is the result:

before:

41. Apple Blossoms

For this effect, I sharpened the image using the overpass filter, changing the blending mode to "overlay."  I then added some some lens flare, boosted the vibrance and liquified parts of the image.

Here is the original:

40. Many faces

Tonight, I played with an image by creating many different layers and using the puppet warp tool to peel away different parts of the face and then changing the scale of the warped images. The collage was fun, but discovering the 3D New Shape from Layer tool was even better. I used the cube and the ring here. 

39. Techno Tree

I played with the levels of hue and saturation to get this wild looking tree.  The original photo below, was taken in Portland, Oregon.

38. Marble

Using a photo from last year's project and this incredible one by Misha, compiling many of the 2011 365 projects , I resized it, and warped the image to fit onto the marble.

37. Ladies

I used my photo of a statue at Maymont and then cut and erased various parts of the bodies so the following picture would appear beneath.  Then I had fun painting nails, hair and make-up.

here is the original:

36. HDR with Saturation

before: