New Year + New Smartphone = Instagram Junkie

The battle is over - I held off on giving up my old flip phone for as long as I could.  Not because I'm technologically challenged, but because I knew once I got my hand on yet another fun, techie gizmo that much more time would be 'wasted' staring at a computer screen.  Yes, I've got them in all sizes now - phone, tablet, laptop & a desktop with a nice large monitor. Everything a gal could want - with the exception of more hours in the day; could definitely use more of those!

And so with the phone, of course comes Instagram.  I've been a member for all of 3 days and I'm hooked!

So much fun!  The iPhone will never take the place of my beloved camera, but Instagram is a great tool for adding some fun effects & uploading your smartphone pictures. (Most of you no doubt know this already.  As I stated above, I'm very late to this particular party.)

If you'd like to see the images I've been fooling around with, hop on over & see my page.  I'd love to get some feedback.

BeFunky - More Editing Fun!

Photo Elements always has been and I imagine always will be my photo editor of choice. It's a great all around program.  But just for kicks I started playing around with the free online version of BeFunky.  It's great fun if you just want to do something quick with some pretty fun effects.  Here's a before & after shot I took at the Good Guys Car Show in Puyallup a couple of years ago.

To get this vintage, old time kind of feel I used the following effects in varying degrees:

• Beautify
• Soften
• Focus Blur
• Tilt-Shift 2
• Old Photo 13
• Summer 1
• Vignette

I'm the first to admit that I can get a little carried away.  I probably didn't need to actually dabble with quite so many effects for one shot, but hey - it's fun!  And right now it's all about experimenting.

Let's Play!

Dang!  I've really fallen behind with my grand scheme of posting once a week!  Life is getting in the way, but fortunately I'm still taking the time to use my camera, learn more and play around with editing.  Just for fun I grabbed this not-so-great (well actually really bad) shot of my grandson fooling around last year.  (Which goes to show I also haven't been very good about weeding out the non-keepers and staying organized!!)

Anyway...  lousy shot, bad lighting, out of focus and frankly not his most flattering pose...

...but dink around, adjust the lighting, play with a few filters, add a fun frame and I now have a nostalgic image with a completely different feel - one that makes me laugh every time I look at it.   Makes me think of Alfalfa from the old "Our Gang" TV series.  :)

Not a tutorial.  Just sharing some fun I had and hopefully encouraging some of you to get in there and experiment too!

Another Attempt at the "Orton Effect"

I was just itching to try this again.  This time I used a shot of some old typewriters I took in Molson (a very cool ghost town in Washington state).

Here is the original  image straight out of the camera:

And after editing, using only the PSE guided "Orton Effect" and then adding a soft dark edge:

I'm loving this!  Can't wait to do more!!

So after investigating a bit on the internet, it looks like the guided "Orton Effect" was added with PSE version 10.   I did however find lots of tutorials showing how to manually create the same effect in either Photoshop or PSE, all of which looked fairly simple.  I plan to try some of them out to see how they compare to the effect provided in 10 & above (I'm currently using version 11).

The Orton Effect

In PS Elements 11 (and probably in other versions as well) there is something called the "Orton Effect".  It can be found under the "Guided" tab and then "Photo Effects".  In my effort to learn more and try new things, I thought I'd give it a go.

Since flowers seem like a natural subject to use a "soft, dreamy" effect on, I chose this shot I took of a lovely bouquet from a friend. (Thanks Joyce! And to think every one of these came out of her own yard!)

So I've never tried this before and since I'm usually trying to get crisp, sharp images it feels a little wrong to intentionally set about blurring a shot... but here we go...

Looking at a close up section of the before and after, my gut tells me I've absolutely ruined it! But when I look at the overall effect on the whole image and I kind of like it.

This may not be a prize winner, but keep in mind it was a first attempt..  If you don't like what you see here, please don't let it discourage you from trying it out for yourself. I'm sure there is a bevy of info out there on the web for using this technique and trust me,  I intend to take advantage of it.  I think with a little practice and maybe using multiple layers this could be a pretty cool tool.

What do you think?  If you've got experience or tips to share please leave a comment.  I'd love to hear from you.