balloon baby

balloon baby

emma was playing with her balloon baby in the backyard this afternoon after church. it was pretty darn cute. i'll have to figure out more to tell about it later when i'm not so distracted! :)

{later that evening} so i'm much less distracted now. it's nearly 1am, and the house is very still. now lets see if i can come up with something clever for these pics. doubtful, but slightly less doubtful than earlier this evening! emma grabbed a balloon she brought home last night and drew a couple of faces on it (a man on one side, and a lady on the other). she asked if i would take some pictures of her with the balloon. i gladly obliged, and was thinking that i could con her into taking a couple without the balloon, too. turns out the pics with the balloon turned out kind of fun, so i went with those. good idea emma!

when i was post processing the pics in photoshop, i thought i'd see how this one would turn out in b&w with a darkened background. i selected just emma (quick selection tool), feathered the edge of the selection a bit (refine edge button), selected the inverse (CTRL - shift - I). copied (CTRL C) then pasted (CTRL V) the selection. took the new layer with the background and selected multiply to darken just the background. i duplicated this layer a couple of times to make the effect more dramatic (right click the layer, and select duplicate layer).

you can change an image to b&w in pse several different ways. you can use enhance > convert to black & white. or you could use enhance > adjust color > remove color. or you can use layer > new adjustment layer > gradient map, then select the icon that goes from black to white and click OK. using any of these will work with slightly different results. you can mess around with them to see which one you like best. it's a good idea to add a levels adjustment layer to boost the midtones, shadows & highlights. you can also add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to boost the contrast by, say +10 or +20.

here was one of the balloonless pics. it's still in her hands... you just can't see it. one of those not so tricky mom tricks. lol.
got this one of stan at church this morning. thought it was really cool looking. i take pics for my brother in law (who is our worship pastor) sometimes, so i get to "sneak" my camera into church. lucky me. :)

{one more thing to add} i had a couple of questions on where the cool picture frames came from that i used yesterday (and today). i picked them up online at the new house of 3 store. they're by rhonna farrer who is one of my all time favorite digital designers!