Photo credit: chylinski

 

1. Open your chosen photo in Photoshop. This effect works best with well-exposed pictures. You may first adjust brightness and contrast, or do any post-processing adjustment you wish to do with your photo.

2. Create a new layer. From the menu, click Layer, New, and then Layer via Copy. Shortcut: Ctrl + J (Windows)or Cmd + J (Mac).

 

3. A new layer labeled Layer 1 will appear on the Layers palette. This contains your foreground image, which is an exact copy of the background. You may rename your foreground layer if you wish to by double-clicking the layer name. In my case, I labeled it as Foreground.

 

4. Making sure that the foreground layer is highlighted in the Layers palette, pull down the Filters menu and select Blur, then Gaussian Blur.

5. On the Gaussian Blur dialog box, indicate the radius of the blur you wish to apply on your photo. The ideal scale value is when your photo is blurred enough to hide the details, but you should still be able to recognize the image behind it. Start with 5.0 and adjust from there. In the swan photo, I selected a value of 5.0 pixels.

 

6. With the foreground layer still selected in the Layers palette, select the blending mode called Multiply. In this step, watch as your photo instantly turns into something new!

 

7. From an ugly duckling to a glamorous swan, your photo has entered the world of dreams

 

8. Pull down the Layer menu and choose Flatten the Image. This will merge the two layers so that you have just one image.

9. Finally, click File, save the image as JPEG and you’re done.

As promised, here are more tips on how you can have more fun on Flickr. Now that you’ve signed up, uploaded your photos, added your favorite contacts and joined fantastic groups, let’s take a look at some of the advanced features you can explore.

From its minimalist layout to its user-friendly functions, Flickr offers heaps of features that attracted hobbyist and professional photographers alike. Easily, it grew into a place where people can comfortably share their work, interact and learn.

• Use the web-based upload form right in the Flickr website. Ideal when you only post one or two photos at a time.
• Upload photos straight from your desktop with the Flickr Uploadr 3.0. You can download the uploader for Windows (Vista/XP) or the uploader for Mac OS X.
• When you’re on a vacation and there’s no computer within your reach, you can use your mobile phone to send photos to your account.
• Email your photos to your photostream using an especially configured email address.

1. Go to his or her photostream page, say AusPhotographer’s.
2. Click Profile in the menu under AusPhotographer’s Photostream.
3. On the upper right hand part of the Profile screen, click Add AusPhotographer as a contact.
4. On the confirmation screen, you’ll be asked to add AusPhotographer as either friend or family. If the photographer is neither, leave the tick boxes unchecked.
5. Finally, click Add.

Regular readers of the blog will be familiar with the free online image editing program Picnik. You can check out our introduction to Picnik if you are curious. For the curious, the four tutorials in that series will give you an indepth introduction to Picnik.

In today’s tutorial we are going to show you how to use some of the basic Picnik tools to create a very special canvas print, printed card or picture for Valentines day. We have deliberately tried to keep it as simple as possible.

Choose your image

Pick an image that represents a powerful personal moment between you and your partner. An image that features both of you is always ideal You can see our test image below.

Intensify  the colour

Increase the saturation of the image slightly to help create more vivid colours.

Simply click on Edit - Colour from the main menu:

When you boost the saturation make sure that the colours still look realistic.

Add a border

Add a border to your image by going to Create - Frames

You can choose both an inner and outer colour and alter the size of each. Remember to click "Apply" when you have finalised your choices to save your changes.

We applied two separate frames - one square and one circular

Add a shape

Picnik have added a whole range of Valentine’s Day themed shapes and we are going to use them to add a splash of colour to our personalised message. Click on "Create" and then "Shapes"

Choose an image from the available selection. It will then appear in the centre of your image. You can alter the size of the image by clicking on any of the four round shapes on each corner. You can rotate the image by clicking on the round shape on the centre top of the image.

Place it in an area where there will also be space to add some text.

Add some text

Without changing the screen - click on the text tag next to the shape button on the menu.

You can see the available options below:

Make sure you scroll down the font choices until you reach those with a Valentines Day theme.

You can choose:

• The type of font
• The font size
• The font colour

Enter your text to the box in the top of the left-hand menu and then click "Add Text"

You can change the size and rotation of the text in the same way as we worked with our custom shape.

You can see our choices below:

Save your image

Make sure you save your image by going to Save and Share.

If you are particularly happy with the final effect Brilliant Prints can help you turn your final image into a very special Valentine’s day canvas print. Alternatively, submit your image to us for our inaugaral Valentines Day Competition and you could win an 11 x 14 inch print with your image delivered before Valentine’s Day.

In the heat of the photographic moment, it can be very easy to focus only on the subject of the shot and ignore what’s happening in the background. It’s only when we download the images onto our computer, or get them developed, that we realise that we also managed to capture a whole array of distracting clutter.

In the first of our quick tips - we’ll be showing you how to achieve some retrospective simplicity with the aid of some not-so-difficult Adobe Photoshop tips. The basic principles would apply to all photo editing programs.

Step 1: Crop the background

Cropping out as much of the background as possible is a simple easy, short-cut. Just make sure that you don’t detract from some of the basic rules of composition and symmetry.

For our test picture we are going to use an image from a press conference announcing the "Crowded House" Reunion. We are going to attempt to edit the photo to focus it far more tightly on the gentlemen in the Hawaiin shirt.

 As usual, we used our marquee to make the initial selection - and then selected Edit - Crop.

Step 2: Select your subject

To blur our background - we want to use the lasoo tool from our toolbox to very roughly select around our subject. Make sure that you leave a little bit of space around his body (as per the image below)

We want to eliminate some of the extraneous space by feathering our edge. In Photoshop goto Select - Feather. The value will differ depending on the final size of our image. You want to choose a number of pixels that brings the marquee selection closer into your subject without crossing over any of their edges.

Invert your selection by going - Select - Invert.

Step 2: Blur the background

To blur our background we are going to use the Gaussian blur tool. Goto - Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur. Choose a value that blurs the background without totally eliminating our perception of the subjects. If you have the preview button ticked you can keep trying until you get something that works perfectly. For our test image we only needed to use a very small value.

If you were a little bit messy, you may need to touch up the blurred background manually.

Use the blur tool from your tool-box, choose a small brush size and touch up any edges around the body of the subject that were not blurred by your initial pass. If you treat it like a standard paint-brush, the task should not be too difficult.

 Step 4: Saturate/Desaturate

In the final stage we want to desaturate the background slightly to further increase the emphasis on the main subject. Select your sponge tool and set it to desaturate 15%, then brush over the majority of the background.

 After desaturating the background, change the sponge tool to saturate and set it at a smaller value (7-8%) Paint over the subject to slightly bring out the colour.

The final effect should be subtle - but should help the subject of your image - just pop a little out of the background.

You can see our attempt below and compare it to the original image. There are other methods that may produce more effective results - but the advantage of this method is that it’s fast, effective and easy!