Time-out to Play!

After a hectic schedule today, where we left home at 9:30 a.m. and were essentially gone until nearly 5 p.m. with a brief stop by the house to change clothes, I needed some down time.

Our schedule today included (1) church services, (2) Life Group fellowship, (3) delivery of items to help my house cleaner with her Volunteer Spay and Neuter Clinic scheduled for May 25-27 in Yellville at the Marion Co. Fairgrounds. We also had to return (4) a long-distance phone message of my half-brother who just had heart surgery and finally (5) we finished a business transaction with my best friend around 4:30 p.m. Too much retired life for me!


For some relaxation in the midst of stress (see previous post), I decided to play around with Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.

SOOC

I have only completed 1.5 lessons in a textbook for this software. I am a tad impatient it doesn't dive right into the creative processes I know this program has.

Instead it has 135+ pages of nearly 500 pages on the ORGANIZER feature of the program. I prefer to do my own organizing, which is nil or none.  However, I can see some advantages to the organizer, especially tags.  It's just that I want to choose what to organize in true NitWit wisdom and not necessarily the way dimwit ORGANIZER decides. So I'll plow through the chapters but may take a peek ahead now and then.

Effect 1

But today I play: [Hope Jinksy at napples notes, sees I can create rhyme on occasion, albeit almost too short to read!]

In order above of insertion are a number of creations from a single photo: The first shot is straight out of the camera [SOOC]: no corrections like crop, contrast, white light, color, noise, etc.  Crop would have been minimumly~probably the tip of white at the bottom of the SOOC photo. This is backlit photo which I love with flowers and other semi-transparent subjects.  Although not a MACRO, the Zoom lens helped give that appearance. I suppose Close-up is a better adjective.

[All photos should be clickable to enlarge.

This post is created in Blogger In Draft,

so don't guarantee!]

Effect 2- Lens FLare (I think)

The rest of the photos are effects applied to the SOOC photo. Since there are probably 100s of variations, I did not bother to remember which I used. Remember I am playing! I did take note these same effects can be applied to text, clip art, and projects, not just photos.

I only applied one effect to each photo. Imagine the fun of mix-and-match, as well as the degree to which each is applied. WOW!


Having always been a realist insofar as photography is concerned, I can see I may find an artistic leaning with this program, as well as FUN~ FUN~FUN!

Effect 3- subcategory of 
some effect called zoom

Nothing could be better for a NitWit......

Oh yes! I have an inexpensive light box with LED daylight balanced lights ordered.  Imagine the fun I anticipate with this, especially in the winter.

I could have built a light box. At this point in my life I don't need to be worried with details. Building is easy to do insofar as the box is concerned. Building a lightbox in a la DIY mode allows for sizes not found in commercial offerings: usually 1"x1", 16"x16" (most common), 24"x24", i.e., basically square. The larger the box, the more it costs.

Effect 4

Buying daylight balanced lights is tad harder and the expense part of a project. But it is possible and the newer energy saving (curly cue ones) are even available balanced for daylight.


Back to my Play Today~~~Which photo effects do you like best?

[Besides SOOC, I like #4. The texture reminds of  palette knife oil painting. If I had applied a slight blur to it, I would really have a piece of amateur art.]