How to make a personalized watermark

Very, very easy to do. First, open a blank file at desired size. I chose 1" heighth x 3" width.
Then I used different text fonts and wrote my blogspots name in black. Then I opened up a swirly brush and stamped it next to the left of my text. Now, click on select-select all (to select your image). Then, click on edit-define brush from selection. Name your watermark in the pop up box and you are done. You will now see your image as a brush that you can now stamp onto any photo. You can choose any color and any opacity. You can see the first photo in this post is with a black brush, set at 75% OPACITY. The second is white at 25% and the last photo is white at 75%. You can adjust the brush size based on your photo. Now don't forget to SAVE your brush as an .abr file, so you can use it again. I always forget to save it, but when I select a new set of brushes, PSE sends a pop up box to remind me that I need to save it. Now it is always there for future use. If you want to save image onto your computer, be sure to save it as a .PNG file.

Adding texture to a photo

Do you ever wonder how people make their photos look like this? They add texture.

There are several places you can download free textures, see the bottom of my post. The following pictures show a photo, a texture, and the combined texture added to the photo. Here is what was done. First, open the photo and the texture. Drag the texture on top of the photo. Chose a blending mode. In the example below, 'vivid light' blending mode was selected. Then a layer mask was added to mask out the texture effect on the face, skin area.

Here are some of my trials with this. I added dark scratches to the photo below, and then used a layer mask to mask it off of the person. Try all differnt blending modes. Start with 'overlay' and 'screen' at different opacities. Keep trying other blending modes until you get the look you want.

And on this photo below, I used a linen texture, and again used a layer mask to mask it off of her face and body.

Here are some sites for free texture downloads:

http://www.texturelovers.com/

http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=free+textures

http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com/search/label/Textures

Sneak Peak...."Here Comes the Sun"

I did a photo-shoot today right as the sun was going down. I am loving the hazy effect the sun gives these shots. I will probably post about 10 more pics from this shoot, but here is a sneak peak.

Family photo shoot

A couple of weeks ago, I did a family photo shoot for a local family. At the end, I did some individual portraits of each child. They changed clothes to fit their own style. He did a great job of giving me attitude for his sk8ter pics.

Blending Modes

What are Blending Modes? From your photoshop software, you will notive a drop down menu in your layers pallette. It defaults to say "normal", but you can click on it and see several types of blending modes, like color burn, linear burn, overlay, etc. So here is what that means.

Let's say you open up a photo. Now click on the thumbnail of that photo in your layers pallette and select duplicate. Now you have the duplicate image on top of the orinial image. Because your blending modes is defaulted to normal, your photo will look the exact same. Now, with the duplicate layer selected, chose a different blending mode. Below, you will see what different blending modes will look like when you blend a photo with it's duplicate.

Well, now you may ask, what will my photo look like if I blend it with something else. Well, you will only know if you try, but below you can see what this photo looks like when blended with a neutral piece of scrapbook paper.

Now this can very addicting as you now try to put several blending modes on top of eachother. So let's talk about the first photo of this post, with the 4 kids on the bridge.

First I opened the photo and then I dragged a neutral color paper underneath of it. I chose the blending mode, linear burn.

2. I made a duplicate of the photo on top of it and chose blending mode, screen.

3. I made another duplicate on top of that one and chose, linear light.

4. You will have to play with the opacity of each layer to taste. I wanted to desaturate it a little, so with the linear light layer selected, I clicked on image-adjustments-hue/saturation. Once the pop-up box came up, I slid the slider down, to decrease saturation. Do what looks best for your photo.

5. Finally, I took the same paper from the bottom and added a new layer with it on the top and used the blending mode, saturation. Now I am liking the way this photo looks. You might spend hours getting exactly what you want, but practice, practice.

Now, I can't remeber the exact blending modes I used to go from this BEFORE:

to this AFTER:but, I played with it enough to make the background as light as possible after first making it black and white. Once i did that, I placed the photo onto a 12 x 12 new page. I placed it in the corner. I got my eraser tool and set it to 33% opacity and erased around the edges of the photo so it wasn't a blunt rectangle. Then I got my type tool and wrote a few sentences about my daughter, copy and repasted it all over the 12 x 12 layout, staying clear of the photo part. I used my eraser tool with a low opacity to lighten up the text on the bottom left hand corner so that when i wrote the word l.O.V.E, you could see it better. And I finished it off with a border.