Friday Find ~ Free Photo Enhancement Class

I had an email this morning from Jessica Sprague, mentioning a free class she is offering to celebrate their 6th birthday. I took a very similar class with her, almost 4 years ago now, and was really pleased with the results I achieved on my photos.

The video lessons were easy to follow and the photo above was probably my favourite from those I enhanced. Changing the bright, sun drenched colours to sepia and adding a texture, in this case. I think I am a reasonably good photographer as far as composition goes, but when it comes to photo editing I am fairly clueless.

The photos you see on this blog are pretty much as they come from the camera. I upload them to Picasa, crop them and sometimes use the ‘Feeling Lucky’ button, if the colours look wrong to me on the screen. That is the extent of my photo editing prowess!

It was fun to try out some creative techniques. Most of the colour was taken from this photo and then I did some hand tinting on her cheeks and eyes, to give a vintage look. I found the brush work quite tricky and didn’t pick the best colours, but I love the photo anyway.

Adding a brush, which was very simple to do.

Using a clipping mask to get the distressed edges. Again very simple.

Finally a TTV (Through the Viewfinder) image. There was a trend a few years ago to use a digital camera to take a photograph through the viewfinder of an old camera, complete with its years of dust and dirt. In this example the effect is added as a layer over the top of your photo, much simpler to achieve. Another favourite of mine.

The class begins on June 24th. If you’ve never done anything like this before, why not give it a try? Even if you think you are not in the least tech smart, like me, you might just surprise yourself. You’ll need Photoshop Elements on your computer, but other than that the class is completely free. Have fun!