Monday, December 3, 2012

Christmas Glow


Isn't this picture absolutely adorable? I just love it. We went to the Santa's Workshop that was set up at the library on Sunday. It was such a wonderful free event that the Arts Council puts on and I'm so happy we decided to go. They had a wonderful Santa, meaning the guy had an actual beard and looked the part. There was no screaming and crying from my children (unlike the poor kid in front of us) and they rattled off the toys they wanted for Christmas. Have I mentioned how much I love this picture?

Now I must admit the picture didn't have this "warm, fuzzy feel" to it when I uploaded it this morning (thanks for taking the picture and sending it to me Dad). I spent a good twenty minutes with it in Photoshop to make it look like this. You see, occasionally I actually use my Bachelor of Arts degree. Today I thought I'd give you a quick Photoshop filter lesson in case you'd ever like to make your photo's "glow" like the one above.

Here is what the picture looked like directly from the camera. Before:

 Cute, but not perfect. Now first off you'll want to correct any Brightness/ Contrast issues the picture might have. I also changed the Color Balance to make it warmer rather than cooler. Oh and I made the tree bigger and blacked out the elf in the right hand corner.

Then all you do is:

1.Duplicate the photo layer.

2. Use the filter "Gaussian Blur".  Make it 5 pixels, or around that.

3. Then in your "Layers" window, pull down to "Multiply".

4. Brighten it up with either "Brightness/Contrast" or my favorite "Curves".

End result:


Doesn't it just glow? Gotta love those filters.

3 comments:

Granny Randi said...

I love what you did to the picture! It's very sweet.

I remember when we took the boys to see Santa. Santa asked Sean where he lived and Sean said..." in the middle of nowhere!" Santa laughed and I was mortified as my words came out of his mouth!

Hoofprints said...

"Occasionally I use my Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree." Uh...you sculpt dogs weekly. I'd say you use it a lot more than "occasionally". :-) great pic though. We'll go to the more local one next weekend and that Santa does not look as convincing. :/

The Menagerie Momma said...

Lol Randi, it is scary when kids pick up on more than they should. I'm find this out now.

Eh, Jessica I suppose I should have clarified that....I'm not using the degree of graphic design. I suppose sculpting does fall into the fine art category. Thank you for pointing that out. :p