Tuesday, 26 April 2011

Day 141

It's wet and miserable today - one of those days when you have to have the lights on all day because it never gets properly light. Stuck for anything interesting to take a photo of I decided to play around and try a self portrait, using one of my favourite effects, selective colour.



Aperture makes selective colour so easy to do. There's no messing around with layers; you simply apply a black and white effect and then brush it away wherever you don't want it. The brush tool even detects edges for you, which is great if you were a messy colourer as a kid and found it hard to stay inside the lines!

The other thing I did here to get the bleached out skin effect (oh so necessary at my age if you want to hide the wrinkles!) was to play around with the curves tool. I wish I knew how to get rid of the reflection of the patio door in my eye, but I know if I tried to do it I'd end up making a mess of things.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks, Frank! :-)

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  2. Lovely image and thanks for the explanation of how you achieved it. I wonder if it's as easy in Lightroom. I'll explore...

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  3. This is absolutely fantastic Helen!
    I haven't used selective color much lately, but every time I do, it really is like being a kid with a coloring book and crayons again!!

    For the reflection, try the spot healing brush. It may take a bit of doing, and you will have to make the brush size really tiny, but I think it might work. (I actually like the reflection!)

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  4. Thanks for the comments, folks, and thanks for the tip, Lisa. I'll give it a go. Angie, I look forward to the results of your exploration!

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