Photo Play

Photo Play

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©2003 Designs By Astro
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This tutorial was written May 25, 2003.

This tutorial is written using PSP 7.04 but can be done in older and newer versions of PSP. I ask that

you first work with the photo that I have provided so that you will get the feel for what you will be

doing. Once you get the jest of it you will be able to apply this technique to other photos.

All screenshots are resized and optimized to save on load time.

If you'd like more of my photos to play with, you can go here to download them... Digital Photo Play!

The above photo will be our finished image, it is one of my own photos I took this spring of a Gardenia

growing in my yard.

1.) Right Click and download the Gardenia photo below. Open the image into PSP, Duplicate the window and

close the original.

Make sure the image is at 100% viewing.

2.) Click on your Freehand Selections Tool and set to these settings....

3.) Now use the tool to select the Gardenia and a few of the leaves, take your time and try to get only the

areas you want to stand out. Here is what mine looks like....

4.) Once you have the area you want selected, go to Selections and click on Invert. Your selection

should now be around the outside of your image.

5.) Go to Colors. Adjust, Brightness/Contrast. Set the Brightness to -115 (that's minus 115), Contrast

should be set to 0.

6.) Now go to Effects, Blur, Gaussian Blur, set the radius to 28.00, click ok, then go WOW!! *LOL*

Pretty kewl how the yellowy flower underneath the pretty white flower makes it look as if it's

glowing! Also look how that flower seems to pop out at you now!! All that with just a little

effort....but we're not through yet... read on!

7.) Deselect your flower.

See how the edges that were selected are a little sharp and jaggy? Well let's fix that. Click on

your Retouch Tool and use these settings to go around the edges to smooth them out some....

That's it, all that is left is to resize and frame it!!

I hope you'll find this technique as useful as I have, it's so easy to turn not so stunning photos

into eye poppers.

Thanks for doing the tute, I hope you've enjoyed and learned from it.

Until next time, God Bless!

Connie

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