My human has been playing around with photo effects on her own photo blog and she thought she would take the effect she used on this purple flower photo and try it on a photo of Binga. (She tried it on a photo of me first, but she didn’t like the way it turned out.) It’s pretty easy, and while she did it in Photoshop, if you use different photo editing software, you should be able to figure out how to recreate it there.
After she made the usual color fixes and touchups, my human made two layers of the same photo. On the top layer, she added a sharpening filter and way overdid it on purpose.
This is what it looked like, but it didn’t stay that way for long.
She turned the layer black and white by going to Image->Adjustments->Black & White. She uses that particular way of turning a photo into grayscale because she can play with the colors and make them appear lighter or darker gray. Notice that she lightened the reds and yellows quite a bit, and green too.
After she finished messing with the top layer, she went to the bottom layer and did the opposite — she blurred it up a whole bunch!
So now she had the two layers the way she wanted them, and then she highlighted the top, black and white layer and added the magic effect. Well, it is not really magic, but it seems like it. See the gray window where the layers are? There is a little drop-down menu under the “Layers” tab; it is called the Blend Mode and the default choice is “Normal.” But my human went down to where it said “Multiply.” If you want a technical explanation of what Multiply does, you can go here, but the bottom line in this case is it creates an arty effect by allowing the colors from the bottom layer to show through the top layer. It also makes the photo a lot darker, so she lightened it up a bit. This here is what she wound up with:
She cropped the photo so you could see the effect better, and it looks even more interesting when it is bigger. There are apps that can make arty effects, but my human likes to do it by hand in a photo editing program because she has more control.
Oh that Binga is SOOOOO pretty…edited and all!
MY mom would really benefit me and she SURE would have benefitted Tortie Admiral by learning SOMETHING for goodness sakes!
That’s lovely. And some good advice too 🙂
Beautiful shot. Binga looks so much like my little girl Jewelen who passed away a few years back. I absolutely love torties – they have the best attitudes and such beautiful coats.
Oh my, Teri can handle cropping and that’s about it. We sure liked seeing Binga’s transformation, but Teri must also need new glasses cuz she said they look pretty close to her, hahameow!
My mom-person got lost too 🙂
But the result shows your stunning self very well !
XOXO
Binga, you lost The Staff at “overlay”! mol Pretty neat though 🙂
MEWOW Binga my fellow tortie Queen, mew look stunning as usual. It’s about time mewz human spent some equal time on a photo of mew like she does for Sparkle! (Even though I know this is mewz blog and mew are equally as stunning, Sparkle. No offense intended, but I am on a campaign to encourage mewz human to do a blog or Facebook page, or even help Binga write a book from a tortie point of view. Do mew know if she likes chocolate as a reinforcing treat? It works well on my Mom, I can get her to serve me my evening night cap of goat’s milk in 20 secs flat for one mini peanut butter cup.)
My human has about 3456 photo apps I bought her on my mini iPawPad so she could make dozens of lovely photos of me, and how many has she made using them? A whopping 8! There is a need for action here and as usual, guess who must be the Director? How do humans get anything done without a cat around? <>
I love photo editing tips. I’m going to try this one right away.
Hoo-Boy, says the Human. That is WAAAAAAAAY too much work for her! She says I am not good looking enough to bother with all that, plus I am a boring solid color. She says I’m luck she ‘Shops the dust off and cleans up my eye boogers. Hrrmph. YOU girls are lucky.
Very cool effects and we really like the finished product. Binga you are a great model for sure. Did you get some extra treats for theese one? (PS: Your Human’s photo blog is terrific…she has lots of gorgeous photos on there.)
Sparkle, your mommy is very talented, and Binga looks terrific. Our mom says that everything your mom did is way over her head. We’re not surprised! She used some kind of image thingy in Picasa so she could change how Lily looks in her WW photo, but she says that it was super easy. Purrs and hugs, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
OK, that was French and we no habla French. The photo looks nice and everything but everything about layers confuses TW.
great results. but our lazy mom said it’s too much work, hah!
Emma and Buster
Wow, that’s pretty cool. Our mom doesn’t have photoshop which is probably good because she’d never be able to figure it out.
Binga our Mom cannot figure out Photoshop.
*sigh*
Moms
Looks cool! Your human had much better results than Glogirly did! She tried it out on one of my pics but I think she went overboard on the darkness.
That being said, she discovered something kinda cool along the way. When she blurred the bottom layer, it actually looked really cool. She’s thinking of trying the blur effect with everything except my eyes. We’ll let you know if it works.
; ) Katie
Thanks for the tutorial! It’s amazing how a couple quick edits can make a good photo a great photo.
Very pretty! Binga looks pleased too!
A lovely picture of Binga now looks even lovelier.
How very lovely. Now my human can never exactly remember what she does when she changes things!
My human has begun doing screen grabs of what she does to remember the steps, especially if it is a technique she discovered herself, like this one, and not from someone else’s tutorial.
Well, I think Binga is perfect no matter what, but it’s very nice of your human to do this tut. We have PS on the laptop but my mom won’t let us play with that!
She is so talented. I don’t get this stuff no matter how many times I see it. 😉
Binga looks even prettier.. 😉
The publicist said, “huh?”
beautiful!xx Rachel
Our mommy doesn’t know how to use photoshop or any other editing program but we do know Binga is beautiful and we love that last photo!
Very cool. We don’t have photoshop but do use other programs. Thanks for your concern over Yoko! Mom has joined 365project.org – a photo a day online project and you can use any kind of processing – check it out.
Binga you area beautiful tortie….hugs madi your bfff
Momma wish she knows how to use photoshop, but she’s not as talented as your mom.
I never thought of doing something like that. Sounds like a nice project for a rainy day. Thanks!
Thanks for the lesson, we really like the effect too! Perhaps we’ll even try it.
Mindy
Moe
Cookie
Mike
Our Mom so wishes that she could do all that stuff. She just doesn’t have the patience to work on it. But that was interesting how the Mom did all that. Good lesson. Take care.
That’s cool! Binga is a beautiful model!
We like the effect too 🙂
We think Binga makes a pretty model.
Purrs Tillie and Georgia,
Treasure,Tiger,JJ and Julie
Mum’s never tried to do this but we’re going to get her to try it.
Luv Hannah and Lucy xx xx
I suspect your mum had a lot of fun by doing this ! I love it too. Sometimes the results are amazing. With all this help you don’t need an expensive camera 😛
At least your human has some talent in the photo editing area. My human is pitifully lacking in this area so I hope she can learn something from this post. And by the way, Binga sure is cute! Meow and Namaste! ~ Pippy the Feline Yogini