Welcome back to the craft room and today’s Flashback Friday: Rediscovering Photoshop Magic post. Back in 2012 I was excited to participate in an online class hosted by Jessica Sprague. In this class I learned so much about photo editing in Photoshop Elements. Today I am sharing some of the before and after photos from that class. At the end of the post I am also sharing a few more photos that were adjusted using the information gained from this class. Let me show you what I learned!
New Blog Header
Wahoooo! I created my very own blog header and installed it all by my lonesome!! This week I am taking a free class over at JessicaSprague.com called The Photoshop Top 5 – Essential Techniques. I am learning a lot, re-learning even more, and having the time of my life!
In this five-day class, we have learned some fun and practical techniques such as:
- Quick tips for editing photos
- Placing those photos onto a Digital Scrapbook Quick page
- Adding frames and textures to images
- How to create a blog header using brushes
- How to create a hybrid greeting card
With every Jessica Sprague class that you take, you get tons of freebies and links to some fabulous free fonts, and this class is no exception. Here are a few of the images that I created with the help of this class…
Simple Photo Adjustments and a Digital Scrapbook Page
Here is an example of an original image straight from the camera and three different adjustments. The first was adjusted for my skin tone. After doing that, I used the hue/saturation tool to remove the color for a striking black and white image, and then I colorized it with a sepia tone.
With this image and one of my hubby, I created this digital quick page by Jessica Sprague.
Adding Textures and Frames for Artistic Effects
This next lesson was super fun — using textures and frames. In the lesson we received the following downloadable items:
- 2 practice images to work with
- Vintage yellow paper texture – iStock_000019154955
- Dark texture
- A colored texture page – iStock_000020383943
- Polaroid mask – nrj-poloroidxfer-masks4
- Polaroid Transfer Frame
With the help of these items I was able to transform the following images into what I think are now works of art, suitable for printing and hanging on the wall.
The Denver Capital – Before
After spending the day in Denver with my husband, I was thrilled to see how stunning this photo of the capital turned out.
The Denver Capital – After
As beautiful as the original photo is, the after looks like a wonderful blast from the past!
Do you prefer the original version or the vintage-style edit?
Golden Dragonfly – Before
I found this beautiful golden dragonfly hanging out in my yard one day and just had to take a photo.
Golden Dragonfly – After
The edits on the original photo really bring out the color of this stunning dragonfly.
Supplies and Brushes for the Blog Header
In the fourth lesson, the blog header, we received some fun items to try, which included the following:
- JS-PSTOP5BlogHeader – photoshop file with all of the items needed to create the image above.
- A link to Dafont.com for the Lobster 1.4 font
- pp-kl-lovemyboy-pennant 1-3 – which I did not use in the header above, but may in the future.
- JS-BlogHeaderBrushes – brush set
- CarinaGardner_border – the image on the bottom of the header.
Here are three blog images that I created using a number of items included with the class.
All of the pictures on the left of these headers are images I took. The foggy tree and lake was taken in Illinois, the rose is my Peace rose from a few years ago, and the poppies are from our last trip to Las Vegas.
More Photoshop Practice and Photo Edits
While waiting for the last lesson to be posted, I did play around with more photos that I have taken and want to share them here.
The two flag photos were taken at an event sponsored by the Dan Lewis US Military Historical Museum in Fort Morgan, Colorado.
The following hot air balloon photos were taken around the town of Dacono, Colorado. On beautiful summer days you can see hot air balloons flying just about every weekend.
The last photo is my son getting ready for a Youth Pronghorn hunt sponsored by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Thank you for joining me for today’s Flashback Friday: Rediscovering Photoshop Magic post. Even though I only used a free version of Photoshop Elements for this class, I had so much fun and learned so much! Unfortunately, while working on this post I did follow the link to Jessica’s web page and it looks like she is no longer offering classes. That is such a shame because she is a fantastic instructor!
Before you go, I would love to know — which transformation caught your eye the most? Do you prefer the subtle edits or the dramatic vintage effects? Let me know in the comments! Until then, have a fantastic weekend and I will see you back in the craft room again soon!
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