The good ol' B&W treatment.

I love the effect of changing a colour photo to black and white. It looks moodier, more artistic and definitely more interesting. The one above started out as this...

...an ok shot, but nothing to write home about.

The black and white effect seems to clear out the clutter and focus on the best aspects of the shot.

These shots below look more dangerous in B&W...

They make South Freo look less like a beachside haven for middle-class hippies and more like the kind of place you wouldn't let your daughter go after dark.

Here they are in colour...

See what I mean? No sign of a seedy underbelly here.

What I'd really like to do is give my life the B&W treatment. Clear out the crap rubbish and make everything look a bit more interesting and artistic. 

What's not to love about that?

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Not happy Jan....

I know, I know....such a grumpy title to go with these peaceful-looking images. The fact is, I am back at work. Long-service leave over with a capital Oh-Dear-God-I-Just-Want-To-Sleep-In. As nice as it is to see all the lovely people I work with, staying home and playing around with Photoshop (whilst wearing my slippers) was infinitely better. I spent lots of time designing stuff to hang on my walls. Artwork I guess it's called. Strangely, designing was easier than working out how to get it printed to any kind of standard. Still, quicker than you can say "I'll have another IKEA frame thank you very much", I have some custom-made designs framed and hung. I even have one hanging at my sister's place.

All of which relates not-at-all to these shots taken with my Nikon way-back-when my teenager was still little-ish. Having had no time at all to take pics (a fulltime job 'll do that) I was scrolling back with a hefty dose of nostalgia (and not a little grumpiness - hence the title), and came upon these. They were taken with my 50mm lens (the one I have trouble focusing), with my camera set to manual mode. I bravely waded into manual as I wanted a shallow depth of field with a fast-ish shutter speed. A good portion of them were terrible, but some were not-too-bad. And, addicted to Photoshop as I now am, I have made a little collage for y'all. 

So, tomorrow it's back to the real job - the one that pays the bills. But tonight, I'm happy to be back in my slippers one more time.

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Framed

Don't you love it when you come across a helpful person? Well, the lovely chap at The Minute Man Press in Fremantle is one such person. Just to be clear, he is not a short statured man, but a very quick man, in case you are confused by the name of his business.

I had spoken to him on the phone earlier in the week to find out some details. I had noticed that my Photoshop files were about the size of a small country, and when I enquired about this he suggested I start by making them the size that I wanted them to be printed. "Good tip", I thought, but didn't want to ask how to do that for fear of seeming, well, you know...stupid. 

He mentioned that the resolution should be no higher than 300. "So 72 won't do?", I asked. His response was somewhere between pity and horror, so I took note to change the resolution. 

My last question was about colour. "It needs to be (insert something along the lines of DKNY here)". Thinking it couldn't be anything to do with an American fashion designer, I took note to find out what this abbreviation was and use it.

Oh dear. It looked like I needed to start again. So, back to Photoshop, and after a bit of looking around at the settings available to set up my 'canvas' for a new file I saw I could choose the size in cm, set the resolution to 300 and choose CMYK colour. Easy.

A little while later I had this print saved in JPG and PDF, and had added the word "Flying" to the picture. It just seemed to need it.

The Minute Man had told me to bring the pictures in on a disk, so that is what I did. He was very helpful in assisting with paper weight and other details such as gloss vs no gloss. (Who knew these were questions?) He even commented on how well they had turned out, and told me that I "obviously knew what I was doing". Ha! If only he knew.

I had another couple of designs printed up too, which I will share with you another time. In the meantime, Mr Minute and I are very happy with how this one turned out.

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More Photoshop madness

I can't seem to walk past my computer at the moment without sitting down to do battle with Photoshop. It's me against the software!

Photoshop may be winning the war, but I think I have won the latest battle....teaching myself how to create silhouettes.

The image above started out like this... (one of my favourite photos by the way, taken a few years ago)

Using the "quick selection tool" (which, confusingly, looks like a paint brush) I selected the part of the photo with the figure jumping.

Next, I clicked "edit", and then "fill", and filled the selected part of the photo with white. 

I then clicked "select" and "inverse" which then highlighted the remainder of the photo, and again, filled it, this time with yellow.

Next I used the quick selection tool to highlight the white image and copy and paste it. To move them around I had to click on each "layer" (this is the part that I really don't understand about Photoshop - what are these layers you speak of?) and click the moving tool to move the images around.

And, sadly, these few simple steps took hours! Oh dear. But I'm happy with the result, and may play around with it to make it suitable for uploading to Spoonflower (to make some fabric). It may also make a cool artwork to put in a frame.

Once I'd got the hang of it I played around with some more images. 

This photo of the very clever Minky G and the Effects....

became this....

...kinda like it!

At some point it occurred to me that there must be a "Photoshop for Dummies" book out there somewhere. If I'm ever going to win this war, I'd better get my hands on a copy.

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Beautiful Art

Now I know that nobody likes a Mum who shouts from the rooftops about their kids...but (you know what's coming don't you)...look at this beautiful artwork by my youngest daughter. I think this is beautiful, and, just like my daughter, it's a little bit ethereal, a little bit bold!

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