Thursday, March 31, 2011

Good to WOW Week 12–Grass Pt2

Today is the day we get to complete the second half of the Good to WOW challenge.  In order to do so we go to Ashley’s blog and check out the tutorial she posts and then apply it to our photo.  You know, the photo that I wasn’t going to take of grass and then did.  :)

I’m a bit short on time today but that’s OK.  There wasn’t too much to do to this photo.  At least not that I’m capable of yet since I’m joining in late and haven’t had a chance to back track and catch up yet.  If there are any of the past week’s lessons that you feel would be helpful to this photo feel free to chime in.  That said, here’s the photo:

DSC_6704

SOOC

Our grass is pretty green but there are nasty dead leaves everywhere and a bit of fence in the corner by Towzer’s head.  So despite not really needing to turn dead grass green as in the tutorial I did think it could use brightening and something to make those leaves less noticeable.  I started with the “nice and easy” recipe I learned last week which really is nice and easy.  Then I did the colorize part and discovered I was pretty limited to that since I’m using Elements and not the full version so I don’t have the option of playing with the reds, blues and yellows to make the green a little more…um, realistic shall we say.  Also, since the only part not grass in my photo was Towz and he represents such a small part of the photo I didn’t do the two step process of adding a black fill layer and THEN painting Towzer white to bring back his “normal” color.  I left the whole picture colorized and then just painted over Towz with black (and now I know what my dog would look like if he ever bathed in green food coloring).  I also dropped the opacity of the colorizing layer just a skitch so it wasn’t so cartoony green.  And here you go:

TowzerWOWEdits

After

And for you guys out there who would be really disappointed if I don’t show a side-by-side, you know who you are:

TowzBeforeAfterWOW

Right now I’m not going to put up the hedge photo, but I may go back and play with it when I have more time and am not supposed to be getting the house ready for out of town guests. 

Remember to send some love to other folks participating in the challenge, just click the button.  G’head, it’s so easy.

10 comments:

Cedar said...

Hi! It is hard to get the green right, isn't it? In Elements when you are in the hue adjust it opens default in Master. Once I colorized it it wouldn't allow me to go the the individual ones, but if you click where it says master it should give you a drop down menu with all the color options--reds, greens, etc. That is what I did to fiddle with my grass, though I still wasn't quite happy.

Have a good weekend!

Ashley Sisk said...

Your edit looks great - actually, you can do what I was talking about with the drop down. You just have to create a new levels adjustment. You'll still want to use a layer mask though so it only affects the area you want it to affect.

koreen (aka: winn) said...

That's really cool! I love how it makes everything so lush. And puppy is adorable. :)

Catherine said...

Great job brightening up the photo and making the grass pop! I love the side by side photos too, it really shows the changes and makes you say "wow"!

Melissa said...

I love the green edit!! The sun on the dog is perfect too!

Michelle said...

Looks great, nice and lush.

Joanna said...

I know it's so hard to get the grass just green enough & without it being too much..You did a wonderful job here! & I'm just loving your pup :D

jillconyers said...

Definitely a wow edit. I'm going to play with the greener green steps this weekend. Very cool.

Unknown said...

i'm totally impressed - great job!

Coneflower Ranch said...

What a difference, so bright, clear and colorful! Love the adorable subject as well! ;-)