Edit Me! Challenge | Week 24

This week's photo is by Branson, one of the hostesses of the Edit Me! Challenge. I love the earth tones of this picture, so I decided to go light chocolate for my edit:


I still haven't checked the GIMP Plugin Registry to check if there are new scripts and actions, so for this edit, I just go for what's available. This was a very easy edit, by the way - I didn't want to do much as the image was already awesome as is.

• Scaled image to 640 on the longer end.
  
• Ran the "Summer Heat" action, then adjusted the levels to make the tones a bit lighter.
  
• Ran the "National Geographic" script, set to my own preference.
  
• Ran the "Brauer's Warm" filter, set to default.
  
• Ran the "Burn" tool, set to shadow at 20%.
  
• Ran the "Unsharp Mask" tool, set to 0.20.
  
• Added the watermark, flattened, and saved the image.

Edit Me! | Week 23

This week's image is by Wendy Wright of Choose Love. I so love how positive her blog is! Anyway, I just find it so cute to have the boys pose with Tinkerbell, their costumes just look adorable! I just wonder whether the costumes were provided for the photo ops or the boys had their own Peter Pan and Captain Hook costumes.


Getting to this edit is a result of another round of playing around the GIMP settings I have on my netbook. At first, I thought about creating a pencil sketch edit (kinda like those pages of a coloring book), but when I checked the thumbnails of the edits, there's already an edit just that. Of course, I decided to go with a different edit, and coming up with this, I ...

• Scaled image to 800x600 then made a crop selection of 640x480. I decided to concentrate on Tinkerbell and the boys for this one.
  
• Ran the "Forest" action to achieve that greenish tint.
  
• Ran the "Roy's Warm" script, set to 25%.
  
• Ran the "Retinex Image Enhancement" script, set to low.
  
• Ran the "Manny Librodo" sharpening script, adjusting the levels to my own preference.
  
• Brushed a layer of the "Burn" tool, set to shadow at 20%.
  
• Added my watermark, then flattened and saved the image.

I don't know how to call this edit, but I am a bit happy to come up with this.

Edit Me! | Week 22

Edit Me! Challenge now has a new home, and for this week, Kristi provided us with this very pretty image. I spent my whole day either exercising or editing pictures, so it was just a few minutes ago when I downloaded and edit this picture, so I didn't really give it that much thought, I just clicked on different menus on my GIMP until I came up with this:


I love black and white portraiture, so seeing the SOOC image, I already knew I'd go for a B/W edit. To arrive at this edit, here were the steps I made:

• Resized image to 640px on the longer end.
  
• Ran the Split Tone script, using the default colors (orange and teal).
  
• Ran the National Geographic script, set to my own preference.
  
• Ran the Duotone script, set to Soft.
  
• Adjusted levels, added my namestamp, flattened, and saved the image.

All the scripts were downloaded at the GIMP Registry, in case you're using GIMP and would like to try out the scripts, too.

Edit Me! | Week 21

Today's SOOC image is provided by Amy of Artistically Amy. As what I always "complain" every Thursdays, why do the SOOC image has to be already perfect? Hehehehe. Another difficult image to edit for me, but playing with the downloaded scripts and actions, I came out with this:


I wanted to turn this into an Infrared image, but sadly I don't know the basics of doing it, so I just went with this.

The steps I made:

• Resized image to 480x640.
  
• Ran the Duotone Script.
  
• Ran the Urban Acid script.
  
• Gave it a pass of the Forest Action, to make it a little greener.
  
• Ran the Manny Librodo sharpening script.

Thankful for these pre-made actions and scripts that made editing easier. :)

Edit Me! | Week 20

This week's very pretty picture is from Kala of The Wishful Lamb. Before I saw this picture, two of my photography pals just had their baby shoot, and I can't help but feel a little jealous because taking photographs of babies was something I dream to do. I was able to take a few pictures of Jamy (my friend Charmy's first born), but it wasn't really a shoot, but some pictures taken when mom and I visited her. I still dream of doing a baby shoot - complete with props and all, just like what Kala did here.


At first, I wanted to do a black and white edit, but playing around GIMP brought me to this sepia edit. Not complaining at all... as I also made another edit in black and white, but in the end, I still chose the sepia one.

What I did:

• Made a selection around the headband using the Path Tool, then feathered the selection.
  
• Inverted the selection and Desaturated the image, using the "Luminosity" as my choice.
  
• Scaled image to 640px on the longer end.
  
• Ran the Ancient Warm action.
  
• Added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Portrait Sample" set to Overlay at 100%.
  
• Ran the Burn Tool, set to shadow at 10%.
  
• Ran the Manny Librodo sharpening script, levels adjusted to my liking.
  
• Added my name stamp, flattened, then saved the image.

Edit Me! | Week 19

This week's photo is provided by Deb of DebDuty. While reading Branson's intro about Deb, Deb's blog badge caught my attention. Next to the vintage-y / 1970s look on images, that's the kind of post-processing I hope to learn - something light and soft, kinda like baby powder.

I do have the Adobe Photoshop CS5 here in my net book, but I still haven't fully committed myself in learning more about it, so I am not sure if there are pre-made actions that would help me get the look I want in an instant. I have bookmarked the Coffee Shop blog, but I still haven't tried if the actions Rita made are compatible with the CS5.

I only have GIMP to use to post-process images, and for this week, I came up with this edit:

How I came up with this?

• Scaled image to 640px on the longer end.
• Ran the Dodge tool.
• Ran the Ancient Warmth action, then adjusted to Curves to make it a bit lighter.
• Ran the Urban Acid script, set to 20%.
• Changed the saturation level to -45.
• Ran the Summer Heat action, and adjusted the Levels.
• Added my name stamp then flattened and saved the image.

In case you want to know, the fonts I used were "Smiley Monster" (bigger ones) and "Jane Austen" (script). Personally, I liked the edit. It didn't come out as soft and light as baby powder, but I think it had a hint of morning in it.