My latest Holly image.

Click on the image for a bigger view.

I am in love with this image of Holly. :)
My baby graduating from High School this year. Where did the time go? I know... she looks serious and almost sad but this is the true Holly. She is deep and serious and walks around with wrinkles on her forehead most of the time. This image truly captures her essence.

Here is a tip I did on this image. I wanted to have the background darker so when you looked at the image you would be drawn to her face. To try and work with a layer mask would have been to difficult with all of her fly away hair. So I used the lasso tool. I drew a selection about her hair and body. Gave it a nice size feather, Inversed my selection to affect just the outer edges. Ctrl, Shift, I is the invert shortcut. Hit Ctrl J to put my selection on it's own layer and changed the blend mode to multiply. I didn't think the effect was dark enough so I used Ctrl J and made second copy and lower the opacity of the second layer a bit. I have been using this quite often instead of a vignette. It gives almost a burned in effect.
So go ahead and give it a try on one of your images and see what you think!!

Remember, multiply will darken, screen will lighten, and softlight will add contrast.

Happy Weekend Everyone!!
~kimi~

Comments

Stacy F. from Arkansas said…
Kimi,
Can you tell me what settings you used on your camera when you shot this picture of your daughter? I am taking Candice's class over at Jessica Sprague..I'm really new at this photography stuff...and I love to find out what settings others use. My twins are also graduating from high school in May..it goes by so fast...
Thanks for your help,
Stacy
March 20, 2009 at 10:22 PM
kimi kreations said…
Hi Stacy...

I am using a friends Nikon D200. I have to admit. You almost can't take a bad image. The quality of the images I am getting, my D80 never got. I was using an 85mm lens with the aperture on about 4; the ISO was set at 100 and we were in deep shade on the side of the house.
March 20, 2009 at 10:32 PM
GT Cindy said…
Thanks for the tutorial, I'll give it a try on a few pics of my daughter. Holly is a beautiful young lady, aren't we lucky we have daughters who are so tolerant of our photography work?
March 20, 2009 at 10:35 PM
Sunny Archibald said…
Beautiful girl; beautiful processing.
March 20, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Denise Marie Olson said…
Holly is such a beautiful girl....she makes any camera glow!! Such a lucky mom!!!!
March 21, 2009 at 2:08 AM
JMCS said…
Hey Kimi,

Awww, Holly is absolutely gorgeous and this photo is beautiful. Hey, finally signed up for the Phaunt U forum for a year and saw you and Leah (LCH) on the forum over there. I have learned so much already and I hope to learn more. Take care hun! :)

Hugs,
Jonni
March 23, 2009 at 2:05 PM
Mary said…
ABSOLUTELY STUNNING...........
April 1, 2009 at 3:41 PM
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