Thursday, July 07, 2011

Edit Me! | Week 08

Welcome to the 8th week of Edit Me! Wow... time flew really fast, it's been two months since I started playing with images and ending up with a totally different look.

Edit Me! Week 8 | SOOC

This week's image was provided by Jen of Mama Schell says. I totally love the feel of this image - it's like a scene from an Old West movie. I am actually imagining that after the stage coach pass, one character would enter the saloon and have some beer. :)

Edit Me! Week 8 | Sepia Edit

Since I envisioned the image to be something from an Old West movie, I decided to go sepia with my edit. At first, this wasn't my final image... but as I uploaded the images on my Flickr account, I decided to re-edit and add some textures.

The recipe for this image:
  • Using the path tool, I made an outline around the stage coach (I also included the road), inverted the selection and blurred the background.
  • Resized the image to 640x425. (GIMP has this auto scaling that resizes the image based on the size wanted so it would look proportionate. Since I always post images at 640px on the longer end, I just entered 640 and GIMP scaled it to 425px on the shorter end. Normally, pictures I share here on my blog are 640x480px).
  • Ran the auto white balance command.
  • Converted the image to sepia.
  • Ran the Ancient Warmth script (levels I adjusted to my liking).
  • Ran the Retro Active script.
  • Ran the National Geographic script (I always use this on my images).
  • Adjusted the curves.
  • Applied two Kim Klassen's textures - "Chamomile" set to normal at 50% and "Canvas Back" set to divide at 60%.
  • Flattened the image, gave it a pass of the unsharp mask tool and burn tool, before adding my name stamp.

Although I liked the first edit I created because it was sharp and bright and looked as if the image was taken just now, I liked my final edit more. I felt this edit was something taken from text books, and it somehow looked like an old post card.

Happy Thursday!

*** Jenn ***