Good To WOW Week 13–UP Part 2

Phew, man, is it over?  I think I gave myself a hand cramp working the finger pad of my laptop on the edits for this weeks challenge.  I wasn’t sure I was going to like either of these pictures with texture but I think they turned out all right.  I think the train pictures are more fun but that could be because the difference is more dramatic. 

So that you can see the differences I’m going to post all the pics in a row and then the information about them at the end of the post.  Enjoy!

Click the photos to enlarge!

SOOC:

Clean Edit and crop:

With texture #1:

With texture #2:

SOOC:

Clean Edit:

With texture:

And then I realized how tired I was and that I didn’t feel like playing any more.  I’m taking my ball and going home.  ;)

Explanations:

Clean Edits – both clean edits are just that, minor adjustments to levels, hue/sat and brightness/contrast with two exceptions.  On the train photo I masked the bright windows and adjusted output to bring down the glaring white a bit and adjusted brightness a lot.  On Gideon’s picture I sharpened his eyes a bit.

Train Texture #1 – Starting with the clean edit pic all I did was add Kim Klassen’s Le Fleur texture with an overlay blend mode.  If you’ve seen this texture you know that it actually says “Le fleur” down the side.  When I resized the texture over the picture I just left that side long so the type didn’t show.  This picture makes me think of sunny Saturday mornings playing with my kids on the floor.  This just may be my favorite of all of them.

Train Texture #2 – Again I started with the clean edit version, then I added a second hue/sat layer and clicked “colorize”, hue at 35 and saturation at 25 and this gave the photo a sepia tone.  Then I added Kim Klassen’s History texture on soft light at 73%.  Lastly I added a gradient adjustment layer on radial and used a soft brush to clean up the center leaving just the corners dark (anybody know how I can change the color on this, I’d rather have had it sepia like the photo not black).  I also like this one, it reminds me of an old newspaper photograph and I love all things old.

Gideon’s photo with texture – Starting with the clean edit all I did was add Kim Klassen’s Sweet Treat texture on soft light at 85% and brush over his eyes and the bright side of his face to make it a little less bright.  I do like how a nice texture can brighten a photo but really all I see are my precious boy’s eyes.  The eyes have it.

And I can’t forget the button, go ahead click it!  So many beautiful photographs to lay your eyes on.