Since this picture has generated a lot of interest, I would like to share a few steps of how it was created from three different pictures, and to give you a better idea of which tools in Photoshop I used.

From the beginning it was clear to me that I wanted to use a picture featuring my eyes for the Halloween Selfie. I was wondering if having snakes swimming around in my iris was maybe a cool idea, but after seeing how difficult it was to get a really sharp picture of your eye when you have to take it yourself without proper equipment, I had to change plan. I remembered seeing a movie poster a while ago, with a hand creeping out of an eye, and I thought I'd give it a try. I have eyes, and I have hands, right?

First off, the picture of the eye. I don't have a ring flash or a macro flash, and I really didn't think it would be too cool to fire a flash onto my eye at short distance, so I decided to use the brightest light in the house, and crawled up onto the bathroom counter, facing the vanity lights, holding the camera with both hands – one hand on the macro lens lens 60mm f2.8) and the other one on the shutter release. It proved to be fairly difficult to take a picture under these circumstances. A few times I almost fell off the counter, too. Most pictures were blurry, and all of them were noisy at 3200 ISO, but a couple of them ended put being somewhat usable.

However, since I needed a bit more space under the eye for the fingers, I realized that if I wanted the whole eye to fill the frame, my eye lashes above the eye would be cut off. That was no good. Luckily, since I took so many pictures, with a trembling hand after holding the camera for so long in this awkward position, I also had some pictures where the lower lashes were cropped off and more of the top was visible. In photoshop, I managed to merge two photos together, meaning, I pasted one picture on top of the other, and adjusted them so that they were perfectly overlapping. Then with the eraser set at 30% I could soften the seams to they would disappear. I also needed to fill quite a bit white in each corner with the cloning stamp since I had to rotate the pictures a bit to fit them better. I also had to clone in some skin to the left of the eye because as you can see, both eye pictures are cut too close to the edge.

Next, my fingers. Again, using the same bathroom light, I took a picture of my hand and tried to squeeze my fingers so they looked like they were holding onto something. It was fairly easy to cut them out and glue them over top of the eyeball. But of course, at this point of the game, the picture looked really fake. What I had to do to give it a more realistic feel was a drop shadow, some automatic, some painted, softening around the edges of the hands, and most importantly painting some light over the knuckles. I added quite a bit of shadow with a soft brush afterwards, trying to make it appear as realistic as possible. I also warped the whole picture a bit downwards to give the eye a more open, surprised look. Under the fingers, on my cheek bone, I brushed in a bit of white to make the fingers appear like they were pressing onto the skin of my face, and a bit of shadow underneath the light.

Finally I had to clean up mascara flakes all over the picture with the spot healing brush (yes, it was that bad) and I brightened the eye ball and iris to give it more pop. Much more pop. I also reduce some redness on the inside of the eye because it was too distracting.

It's really hard to explain all of this, but I hope I gave you at least a bit of an idea of what was involved in getting the picture to look as realistic as possible. I am learning by doing, and the Sunday Selfie was an amazing challenge to learn even more!

In album The Making of "Getting Out…" (4 photos)

Google+: View post on Google+

I made this leaflet for a lady at my office, whose daughter is a single mom trying to supplement her income by selling Christmas cookies. Cover page is a stock photo (with some added handwriting in Photoshop), inside spread with the order form and descriptions, and on the back cover are the photos of the cookies she makes. My payment were the cookies I had to take pictures of. I got to eat them afterwards. :)

Google+: View post on Google+

I would like to repost this because from the replies of my yesterday's post about this, I have been surprised by how many people were not aware of this function In Photoshop CS5. If you have seen the post already, please ignore or mute me. :)

This was supposed to be day 53 of my 365 Day Project, but I felt I needed to remove the useless pole that stuck out of the pumpkin patch. It really was useless, there weren't even any cables going to of from it. So I used the content aware fill tool in Photoshop CS5, and because it only took me 2 seconds to draw a skinny rectangle with the marquee tool around the pole, right-clicked and selected "Fill Content Aware", I thought about how much I loved this function, and how useful I find it when working on almost every shoot.
Of course, it says that I am not a perfect photographer because I don't frame my picture right in the first place, but nobody expects me to be perfect anyway. My joy is in post processing, and although I may have been perfectly capable to clone the pole away with the CS4 version of Photoshop, CS5 and now CS5.5 are just so much more convenient (and actually, better than hand-cloning).
As far as I am aware, Photoshop Elements 9 also has this tool. So go ahead, content-aware-fill your obnoxious brother-in-law from the pictures of your last family reunion. It will seem like he was never there. :)

Google+: View post on Google+

Parties are great. Birthday parties are special. Best friend's birthday turning 40 birthday parties are the best. Don't tell Kelly I posted this picture here. She'd probably kill me on the spot. But that's what friends are for!
Happy Birthday, Kelly! :)

In album 365 Day Project (53 photos)

Google+: View post on Google+

I have to admit that the TV in our living room is pretty prominent. Maybe not as big as TVs in other people's home, but certainly a far cry from our previous 29" bulgy box we owned for 10 years!! And yes, my husband loves to relax watching TV – so do I. I admit that every evening after dinner our little family snuggles up on the couch together and watches programs like "House Hunters", "Dumbest Stuff on Wheels" or "Cake Boss" for half and hour. We talk and we laugh. Yeah, maybe we could play board games like a "proper" family. Maybe we could go for a walk like some outdoorsy people do. But we could also each sit in our own room, doing stuff alone. Is watching TV good family time? I'm not sure, but in my house, it is, and it's one we all enjoy. Together.

In album 365 Day Project (50 photos)

Google+: View post on Google+

Oh, the joys of a child learning to play an instrument. Mom and dad sitting across the room, listening proudly as their child plays the first few notes. Their smiles aren't hampered by the occasional flinching when a wrong note is struck, or when the non-existent rhythm is just that – non-existent. The first 5 minutes are spent with gloating and rejoicing. The next 5 minutes are spent with thoughts about what they would rather do. The 5 minutes after that are like a blur, while trying hard to still keep smiling. From minute 16 to minute 20 they are hoping the door bell or the phone will ring, and from minute 21 onwards, mom and dad are squirming in their chairs, while stiff and unnatural smiles are cramping up their face muscles. The child doesn't notice a thing and plays happily along, only interrupted by the occasional "Oh, wait, that's not it. Let me try that again." As the half hour mark is reached, mom is now seriously considering to fake a heart attack, her attempt only halted by dad, who finally surrenders, dashing for the exit.
Guitar lessons. Money well spent.

In album 365 Day Project (47 photos)

Google+: View post on Google+