Adjusted Pixels

Fading Glory

2006-08-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

The grandstand at the local park burnt down, and I decided to make a little tribute to it in my own way.

It started with this photo:

This is what the scene looked like a couple days ago. Clean up crews were still there.

This is how it used to look. The grandstand overlooking the football field and running track.

My plan was to take the old photo, make it look old (sepia tones help here) and make it fade into the new photo. After doing my best to carefully line up the 2 pictures (the trees in the background helped) I then faded out the old photo with a gradient. The 2 white "blobs" near the upper right of this picture are where the trees didn't quite line up, and I erased them from this photo just to clean it up a bit.

Now I layered these pictures on top of each other and got the desired effect!

The Lovebird

2006-06-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a lot of walks through the local park lately. In the park live a large group of ducks, a few geese and one swan. I took my camera on one of these recent trips. I saw this couple approach the swan as I walked past. I sneakily took this picture:

It is a nice picture, but it would be more interesting if the swan was a bit more, visible, at least, if you could see its head. Luckily I also had a picture like that.

I cut around the bird in the 2nd picture and pasted it over top of the bird in the first. Blending the grass wasn't too much of a challenge and I tried fixing the shadows the best I could.

I didn't like the way the grass looked however. Someone (probably groundskeepers) had driven on the grass and left some tire treads and made those brown marks. I wanted to make them look a little less obvious at least. So some patching and clone stamping brought me to this:

Then I noticed the stone structure dead center in the background. I believe it holds a plaque. I decided to get rid of it and darken the background a bit.

Just as an experiment I decided to try liven up the color of the grass a bit. I think I went a bit too far but here it is:

Quiet Companion 2

2006-05-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

Quiet Companion 2 - Unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

My friend Anne came for a visit a couple weeks ago. While she was here, my (now-ex) room-mate Glenn, Anne and I took a trip to the local cemetary. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. I took lots of pictures, and revisited this angel statue from my last trip. With some new ideas, I took this shot. There was a certain look I was after however.

So after some tweaking with the contrast, desaturating the picture (removing the color) and painting out a little bit of the cross behind her we have the final product. The hardest part was getting the background as dark as I wanted (even after underexposing the picture a bit) - like I said it was a bright sunny day.

Concentrating

2006-04-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Concentrating B
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

I did a lot of work on this photo and I thought it might be interesting for people to see exactly what I did. There are actually 2 versions of this, this being the original one I did. I was really happy with this one too, however I noticed something after I was all done - there is a reflection in the eyeglasses. I looked at it carefully and it would be VERY hard to get that out, so I decided a 2nd version was in order and I'd change the background to match more closely the reflection.

Here's the original of the photo. Notice the background. It's actually my mortarboard from when I graduated high school, hanging on something. Now it's out of focus, and the background fades away nicely, but I really wanted the focus to be on Glenn's face. So the background had to go. I tried various ways of lightening it up, but it ended up looking TOO unnatural. Eventually I settled for painting the background an off-white color completely. This still didn't look right of course. I wanted there to be some texture to the background, it'd look too fake without it.

I used splatter brushes (basically paint brushes in the editing program that are in the shape of a paint or blood splatter) with a darker color to make botches and blobs in the background. The sharp edges of these wouldn't look right, so I selected everything that was the background and gave it a nice lens blur.

After all that was done, it was still a little too plain for me, so I cut out a piece of this picture:, notably the base of the bridge. I took that and put it over top of the rest of the picture, and then lowered the opacity until it blended right. I may have even "erased" the edge of it slightly so it would blend in better.

The final step was to give the picture that "Kevin" feeling, kind of a washed out, unnatural look. This was done by created a new layer based on the original image, desaturating it (removing the color) then using a layer blending technique (I believe it was "Soft Light").

It was at this point that I realized there was a reflection in his glasses. So I followed the steps from before more or less but instead of the bridge used this picture: as the background. I blurred them a bit less so they were still recognizable.

The end result was of course this:

.

And there you have it.

Neighborhood

2006-04-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

So popping up a lot recently is a depth of field trick that makes things look like they are minatures. I was curious to try it. It won't work on every picture.

On this one I upped the saturation of the colors then added the lens blur. The saturation helps everything look artificial. The blur is the trick. Done right you get results like this. I am quite happy with how it looks.

Here's a link to the unedited version.

Post - Edited

2006-04-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

Post - Edited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

I was in Kamloops on the weekend. Downtown there is this foot bridge that goes from the main street down to the riverfront park. These light posts were on the bridge. The yellow bits in the background are parts of the bridge construction.

The saturation of the picture was increased so make the colors more vibrant. I had a few more changes too, see the original picture below.

Post - Original

2006-04-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

Post - Original
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here is the original version of the picture. As you can see the color is kind of dull and there are little bits that kept the picture from looking "clean" that I removed.

The Look

2006-02-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

The Look (Large)
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here's the final version of a picture of my friend Anne. I did quite a bit of editing on this one. I try to practice editing something almost every day if I can, I figure more practice, the better you get right? Anyhow, I've had this picture for a while and I've wanted to do something with it. I really wanted Her henna tattoo on the back of her hand to stand out, but it was very faded in the original. So I played with the colors, highlighted some areas and blanked out most of the background.

Here's what it looked like before I blanked out the background.
Click!

And here's the original.
Click!

Balcony 1

2006-02-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

Balcony 1
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

So, here's an experiment with my new toy. This is a shot off my balcony. My camera is on my tripod. Just a short shutter speed, obviously you can't see much.

Balcony 2

2006-02-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

Balcony 2
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

So here's a shot of the same location, with the shutter left open for quite a bit. I wish I could get a shot of the highway, might try that on the weekend.

New Toy

2006-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

IMG_4531 (Large)
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

A new toy arrived in the mail today. It came all the way from Hong Kong. It's a remote shutter release for my camera. What would someone need that for? Well it helps with tripod shooting, especially for long exposures so you don't shake the camera. Plus you can lock the button down for REALLY long exposures, night shooting for instance.

Pipes - test

2006-02-14T16:43:00.001-08:00

Pipes - test
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here's the edited version. A different look, to me almost looks like a still frame from a video tape.

Pipes - unedited

2006-02-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

Pipes - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here's another experiment. I had this picture from inside the ferry. It really wasn't that interesting, and the goal really wasn't to make it interesting, but to see how various filters, color replacements, etc would affect the picture. Not a drastic change in the edited version, but I think it has a very different look.

the shadow - unedited

2006-02-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

the shadow - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

A bit of a different format this update. This was just a test to see if I could, well change the picture believably. So this was the starting image. I was holding the camera up so I appear to be missing an arm. I thought I'd correct that and clean up the picture a bit.

The Shadow

2006-02-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

The Shadow
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here is the final image. I like how it turned out. A couple small mistakes, but it was just for practice anyhow.

Aged Stone

2006-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

Aged Stone
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

So the photo is cropped a bit to remove some of the bright, bright sky. I wanted a different look, the nice sunny day was a little too, healthy looking. I sepia toned the whole picture to get it looking more "brown". I then used the history brush to paint back in the cross back to it's blue/gray/green color. This is one of my favorites.

Aged Stone - unedited

2006-01-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

Aged Stone - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Unedited version. It was quite a nice fall day.

Forgotten

2005-12-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Forgotten
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here is the edited version. As you can see I cropped out the trees as much as I could to focus more on the structure itself. I punched up the colors a bit and darkened the shadows, especially in the area to the left of the building. I like how even though it's so dark inside you can still see daylight through the windows on the other side of the building.

Forgotten - unedited

2005-12-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

Forgotten - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Unedited version. Took this picture from inside the car (I should have gotten out) on the way to Nakusp with my friend Glenn. A little shack at the edge of someone's farm right by the side of the road.

Fighting the Dark

2005-12-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

Fighting the Dark
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here's my edited version. Not a lot of changes really. Darkened the shadows a bit and changed the color tone of the picture to be more green. I was going for more of a suspense/horror feel to the picture.

I really quite like how the bulb is reflected on the metal panel behind the light.

Fighting the Dark - unedited

2005-12-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

Fighting the Dark - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Undedited version. I took this on the ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo.

Chained

2005-12-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

Chained
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Edited version. I really wanted the rust colors to stay in the picture, but I also wanted the chain to be more visible. I adjusted the brightness and contrast on the picture. I really didn't want colors other than the rusty orange and reds, so I desaturated the grass and wood near the bottom. I think it makes it look older too.

Chained - unedited

2005-12-08T21:56:00.000-08:00

Chained - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Unedited version. This was taken at the Father Pandosy Mission in Kelowna. The historical society keeps all kinds of old farm implements and things there, and the buildings are mostly original mission buildings. Quite the amazing place.

deceptive reflection

2005-11-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

deceptive reflection
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here's the edited version. So what was done. Lets see... I removed the logo from the top, mostly because I wanted a cleaner look. It was too hard (at the time) to get the lettering off the sides of the lids, I could probably do it now. I desaturated (removed the color) from the bottles themselves. One other small detail that might not even be noticable, because of the flash, mirror, etc, some of the color showed up in the shadows behind the bottles. I removed that too.

deceptive reflection un-edited

2005-11-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

deceptive reflection un-edited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

I have this mirrored plexiglass that I was going to use for a computer case mod at one point. Expensive stuff. Anyhow, I never did use it for that, and I still have it kicking around. So one day I thought I'd play around with it. I wanted bright, primary colors for this. This is the unedited version.

Waiting 2

2005-11-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

Edited Version

Unedited.

Sometimes what the eye sees, what the camera sees and what I end up with are 3 completely different things. What I saw was a nice blue carpet, white windows, fairly low light. My camera might have been on the wrong whitebalance setting, but that's all it saw. I didn't want it to capture much more light though, I wanted a dark picture. Of course what I ended up with is better than reality (in my opinion).

Ribs1

2005-10-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

ribs1
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Sometimes drastic changes... oh wait. Experimenting can be fun. I find the best results are with fairly simple pictures, but your mileage may vary.

Cropped down obviously. Basically negative inverted color and just a bit of cleanup.

Original is of a 6" or so model skeleton behind the magnifying glass of my "helping hands" tool. Original is below.

Surgical

2005-10-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

Surgical
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Sometimes just a color change is enough to change the mood of a picture drastically. I didn't like the rubber band or the reflection. I've had a lot of practice since I first did this picture, I could probably do a better job now.

Surgical un-edited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Here is the un-edited version.

Quiet Companion

2005-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Quiet Companion
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Edited version. Had to edit out a few elements of the background that were too bright and took focus away from the statue when the image was desaturated (removed the color).

In patching those areas up had to blur out the background as well so it would blend in better, since my apature setting on my camera wasn't quite right for that.

Quiet Companion - unedited

2005-10-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

Quiet Companion - unedited
Originally uploaded by BadOmen.

Unedited version.

Emerging

2005-10-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Emerging
Originally uploaded by lockheed24.

Here's the edited version of the photo. A little cropping to center the image, adjustment on the license plate, some shading, and erasing the lines on the concrete and the reflection in the bumper. I might have adjusted the color a bit also, to make the blue more vibrant.

Emerging - Original

2005-10-17T20:56:00.000-07:00

Emerging - Original
Originally uploaded by lockheed24.

Here's the original version of the photo.

Adjusted Pixels

2005-10-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was told by a friend that I should start a blog and show some before/after of some of my pictures. So here it is.