Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Mon petit fleurs and a few thoughts on Photoshop

The feline bouquet was arranged for dinner.

Daffodil sat atop the washer, looking like the prim and polite pile of purr she pretends to be.


Rosebud relaxed on the dryer, with her one big ear and one little ear (a story for another time), staring soulfully into my eyes.


Snapper (officially Snapdragon) snarled while he waited for me to snag his dinner and stop snapping pictures.



The lighting was perfect, and the felines were looking their expressive best, save for the yucky white appliances, the electric cords, and the not-so-flattering paint color on the walls behind them.

Enter Photoshop.




Applying textures in Photoshop seems to be all the rage these days, so I thought I'd give it a try. I like what this texture* does to these images. Almost makes me want to repaint the laundry room.

Photoshop is to today's digital photographer what the darkroom was to yesterday's film photographer – a tool to make a good photograph better, or to express or enhance one's style. I use it all the time, if for no other reason than to remove the specks that show up in the sky because I neglected to clean the camera lens.


*Texture is courtesy of Jessica Drossin Photography , via the MCP Actions site. Thank you, Jessica and Jodi.

16 comments:

  1. Beautiful! All that is missing is Deets...

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  2. Daffodil is beautiful! I've always been partial to long hair cats. Gosh Carson, you have a whole battlion to feed!

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  3. Actually todays darkroom is actually called lightroom and is by adobe. It's how I process my RAW images. Great programs, both of them.

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  4. Great pictures of the kitties. Being a not so good photographer, I use photoshop a lot.

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  5. "Pile of purr" - LOL!

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  6. Lovely pictures and the cats are very pretty.

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  7. Ok, you almost had me convinced that it was time for me to get a copy of Photoshop and then you added, "if for no other reason than to remove the specks that show up in the sky because I neglected to clean the camera lens"...ha ha ha. This is, like, a daily -sometimes hourly- occurrence in my life. I *neeeeeed* Photoshop!
    If only it weren't so expensive! sigh.
    So...you really recommend this program?

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  8. Danni, Photoshop is absurdly expensive and is also one of the hardest programs to learn because it can do so freakin' many things - I've been using it for over a decade and am still clueless about many of its tools. Though I haven't used it, there's a stripped-down version called Photoshop Elements which is less expensive and probably has more than enough features for the everyday photographer.

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  9. Great group of cats you have there. and yes, the Photoshop does work wonders. Now they need to invent a link that does the actual walls in a mouse-click!!

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  10. Love it! We got Photoshop a couple months ago and I haven't had time to "learn it". I do most of my blogging at work (psst..don't tell the Sheriff) on a PC but our Photoshop is for our MAC at home...need to learn there. I guess first I need a weekend that isn't filled with errands and chores...where do you find those?

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  11. Amazing the difference in the before and after pics. Rosebud, with her half and ear...I have a soft spot for the "special needs" animals. :)

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  12. I'm on day 3 of a six day photoshop course. I'm excited to start working on my photos a bit more and 'fixing' them up. Sadly, I don't have a camera that shoots in RAW yet. Baby steps....

    These are gorgeous photos. I love them all and I want to hear the story about Rosebud (aka Chews on Bangs). (did I get the right culprit?)

    Carolynn

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  13. Cropping! Don't forget cropping. :-)

    I always figure if I could only do one thing with my pics, I would have to pick cropping....... :-)

    I use Photoshop Elements, and haven't begun to plumb its features.

    As far as I know, the main thing you cannot do with Elements that you can do with the full version is get stuff ready for professional printing. All the color-matching stuff so that what you see on your screen is exactly what is seen on the printed page.....

    And Elements is affordable.

    For anyone wishing to try Elements, I recommend Adobe's "classroom in a book." Very instructive.

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  14. Could I ask why Rosebud has only 1 and a 1/2 ears? My uncle had a Siamese that liked to sleep in a warm clothes dryer.....she got rotated a few times and had her ears slightly "melted" for lack of a better word. It was a sad sense of funny but she lived and the vet was able to save the rest of her "ears"....

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  15. Oregontribal, here's the explanation about Rosebud's ears:
    http://www.the7msnranch.com/2009/12/elf-with-one-big-ear-and-one-little-ear_16.html

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