Fix it Friday

It's my favorite day - Fix it Friday. You can play along at home. Just click right here.

Here's the original. Great photo to start with (note that I did not take this one).



Here's my first edit. I was trying to be subtle.



I used some Kubota Actions:

• LOTR at 25% opacity
• 81K Warming Filter at 8%
• Daily Multi-Vitamin
• Used the patch tool in Photoshop to clean up some red spots

Then I added a texture. This is the Impressionist Edge texture from Patti Brown's Kaleidoscope Gallery Collection. I used it on soft light layer mode:


Then I started over because I wanted to try more Kubota Actions.

This one has:

• Fashion Passion at 23% opacity
• Too Blue filter at 16%
• Magic Sharp
• Used the patch tool in Photoshop to clean up some red spots
• Used Fingerpaint Medium from MCP Actions at 65% to paint over the hair and dress to give it more color pop.
  

And finally I added a starburst vignette at 45%:



One final before and after:


More edits here:

Playing with textures on photos

I haven't played with textures in a while. It's always surprising to see how an overlay graphic or photo can add a lot of color, pop, or interest to an otherwise plain looking photo. If you're not sure how to use textures on your photos, please read my original tutorial here. A quick refresher: You paste a photo or graphic/texture on top of a photo and then change the layer properties to screen, soft light, or hard light. You can then erase areas where you'd like to remove detail.

Here's my photo before texture:



You can click on any of these photos for a larger view.

Then I added two textures from the Patti Brown Gallery Collection. Patti is such a sweetheart, and I really love the images she creates. They are always very artistic. Anyway I used Golden Sun Glow and Lavendar Ice, both in layer soft light mode. I erased the texture from his skin on both layers (using a large airbrush round brush with 70% opacity).



Here's a similar one with Beach Lights in soft light mode and a slightly different crop:



I forgot how much fun textures can be! The beauty of this technique is that each photo and texture will interact differently, so you can truly get creative with your combinations.

You can add textures to your photos using Photoshop/Elements, Corel, GIMP, pixlr.com, and any other editing software that uses layers. You can also lower the opacity of your texture for a more subtle look.

Some of my favorite resources for free textures:

• Shadowhouse Creations
  
• TextureMate
• Free textures on Flickr
  
• Free texture applicator action from MCP Actions
  

Related:

• How to add texture to your image
• Follow me on Twitter for links to free textures and other editing resources
  

Happiest dog ever

I like to take my pocket camera with when we walk Murphy. Sometimes when there's no one else around, we let him off leash to swim in the lake a bit. Apparently he prefers jumping to swimming...

Jungle dwellers

Rob and I rarely use our front door. We park in the back alley and enter our house through the side door. So I guess we can't be too hard on ourselves for not noticing this sooner:



Some sort of crazy vine plant is taking ownership of our front steps.



Seriously, isn't this weird?



Actually, I kinda like it. It makes me feel like I live in a jungle. I think I'll let those vines stay... for a while.



Tarzan and Jane Whitman.

Wedding No. 2

The other recent wedding we attended was for Ellen and Mike. Ellen is Rob's cousin, and you may recall that I mentioned this wedding previously (like when discussing the blue jar centerpieces or the bridal shower I hosted). I promised I'd report back after the big day, so here I am.





This wedding was also an outdoor wedding, and it was absolutely beautiful. I helped set up earlier in the day, so I took a lot of detail photos. My sister-in-law Rachel did all of the flowers. Pretty amazing, huh?









I admit I went a little bit overboard on photographing the flowers. But I'm hoping Rachel will set up a portfolio website to showcase her work, and I wanted to help collect some good pics for her.











Each table was named after a place of personal significance to the couple.





Each table had a light blue table cloth and 3-5 vases. I mentioned before that Elle wanted the collected-over-time look with lots of different styles of vases but with themes repeated throughout the room.









The head table had lots of flower arrangements:













The ceremony was outdoors. Here are all the chairs ready to go.





And the decorated alter. It was made from a tree in Elle's parent's yard.



Here's the groom walking with his parents down the aisle:



The adorable flower girl and ringbearer:



And it's the bride!



Note the "something blue" shoes:





It started raining, so I put my camera away for a while.

And then they were married!





At the reception, a DJ provided dance tunes in between sets by a live polka band (including the bride's father). There were a lot of Polish people in the family, so it was fun to watch people getting down to the polka music.





I used the opportunity to get some nice photos of my in-laws:







Here's Rob dancing with his mom and pretending he knows how to polka.



And just for fun, here's some behind the scenes photos from earlier in the way. I was happy to help Rachel with the flower arrangements, so I drove out to my in-laws house early that morning. Look at their living room and kitchen! Completely taken over by flowers.











Here's my little car all loaded up with flowers:





After setting up the tables, I went home to pick up Rob. We changed into our fancy wedding clothes and snapped a quick photo before heading back to the wedding site.



Rob was tasked with the job of sound man. Here he is checking the equipment and levels before the wedding:





Fun stuff, huh?

Congrats to Ellen and Mike!