Photoshop before/after images

I'll start out with an update on my precious boys - the inspiration to all of my photoshop joy!

Brenden wore BIG BOY underwear at school ALL day yesterday and didn't have any accidents. His teachers were SO proud of him as were we. He does much better with underwear than pull ups. I wasn't sure what they daycare stance was on 'accidents' but they said to just bring in underwear and extra pants and they would make sure he used the potty all day. Its a huge milestone for us! He wears underwear at home a lot but never at school until now. I hope he keeps up the good work.

Logan is doing great. His teachers told me the other day that he was SO good at talking, and he really is. He easily has twice the vocabulary Brenden did at that age. I guess having an older brother has its benefits. He goes to the eye dr. on the 12th to see about his blocked tear duct and then to a urologist on the 17th to look at his hydrocele. So lets hope neither visit is too rough on the little guy. He's been sleeping great lately!

I've been playing around with some photoshop techniques I'm learning online and in books and then applying my own artistic eye and have a fun series of before/after pictures to share (click on any image to view a larger photo)

This is a picture I took in the hospital of Logan. He is just laying on my bed with the white sheets and the harsh flourescent lighting. I will tell you with all of these pictures that I can't remember my exact workflow but will give you a general idea of what I did! I did my best to adjust the lighting, brightening, increasing contrast, adjusting the levels. I used the 'remove color cast' option in the Enhance menu. This feature has you click on an area that should be a pure white/grey/black and it determines what the color cast on that particular 'drop' of photo you picked up and then removes that hue from the entire picture. I had to click around a few times to get the best drop of pure white to really remove that blue tint. I added a vignette to darken the edges of the photo. And I used a free action available at The CoffeeShop Blog called Baby PowderRoom. An action is just a set of pre-set layers that you can adjust and manipulate to use on top of your photo. This action allows you to soften skin, lighten it, even out the color, give it a soft glow, etc. It really is like patting your little baby with baby powder :)

I really like this picture (both the before and after). I tried to do any lighting/color correcting - which was actually pretty minimal in this example. I boosted up the contrast to really get some of the cool colors of the leaves, while trying to avoid making his face too bright and his red shirt too red. I added some 'grit' to the leaves to really give it some texture and a slight vignette to 'burn' the edges of the photo.

This image I was trying to be a little more 'trendy'.. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not :) I played around with the contrast and colors to make things a little more exaggerated and the colors of the background leaves a little more rich. I also added 'grit' to the background of this picture to really pull the texture of the wood and leaves.

This was just a fun little project in trying to add a texture to a picture. I think it turned out really cool. I just put a texture (found free at shadowhouse creations ) layer on top of the original photo. I adjusted the opacity to make it a bit transparent. I masked out any of the texture on top of Brenden that I could. Then I used the eliptical select tool and selected a 'spotlight' area around Brenden and used a transparent brush to paint the selected are black on the mask to essentially erase some of the texture around Brenden. This helped prevent seeing a very 'fake' harsh edge around Brenden where tiny bits of the original white backdrop were visible around the edge of his body where I couldn't precisely cut the texture off of Brenden -- if that makes sense. The final result was quite striking though - in my humble opinion.

In this photo - I give a lot of credit to my camera and lens. All of the depth and blur are straight out of the camera. I just added some color contrast, warmed it up a little, added a vignette, and sharpened the eye area a bit to really make his eyelashes stand out.

This one was just a pretty simple crop and color correct. I also used some of Photoshops special brushes to brush on high contrast on the pillows and also to sharpen the pillows a little to give their fur more texture.

I guess the big point in all of this is that when you see beautifully tranformed images - don't think the photographer did a simple one-click voila! instant beautiful photo! effect. Most photo editing softwares require a lot of human intervention to do a great job. And a lot of it is also your own eye and taste. I think I was looking for that magic photo art maker out there and realized that it didn't exist. So I can easily understand why good pro photography is more expensive, simply because after the photo shoot, expect your photographer to spend an hour or two more fine-tuning the images.  I am in my discovery phase right now so I'm not ashamed to admit that I throw an effect or layer on my photo just to delete it because it didn't look that great. But I'm finding with practice that its becoming easier to look at a photo and go "ah, I need to adjust the levels, the contrast, sharpen a little.." etc. Its all fun tho :)

Christmas with my boys

What a wonderful holiday we had!!!! The boys had a great Christmas! I was fairly well behaved in the shopping department. I kept my total spending down and tried not to overload the kids with every new gadget on the market. I stuck to things I'd really taken notice of them liking.

This year Brenden was REALLY into opening presents. The past 2 years he really was bored with it but this year he opened all of his presents and all of Logans presents too!! Of course Logan didn't care. He was too busy playing with all of his toys. It was perfect teamwork.

Speaking of (what's gonna work? ) Teamwork! Here is Brenden loving on the Wonder Pets blanket my mom got for him. He LOVES the Wonder Pets. He did not like Logan crawling on HIS blanket - which he now sleeps with every night!

The boys each got their own tricycle. Logan is a little short still but can scoot with his feet. Both boys loved their bikes and I can't wait until spring when they can take them outside. Until then, laps in the kitchen will have to suffice! 

Here is Brenden with his Mickey Mouse puzzle (his other favorite character). And in the background is Logan's toy kitchen. Lesson learned by Amy : if you buy cheap, you get cheap. Thats all I will say about that! 

Here is one of my bargain buys that didn't turn out so bad. Big Lots had these generic Pillow Pets (Snuggle Pals or something like that). These are a hit in our house. Logan uses his in the living room when he is overtired and just needs to relax. Brenden sleeps with his every night! 

After Christmas I drove up to WV to visit my friend Erin and let our kids play together and exchange our holiday gifts. It was a great time and the kids loved hanging around each other as you can see. Notice the pacifier on Logan's mouth. This kid has REFUSED the pacifier since like his 3wk of life. He realized it was not a bottle or mama and would spit it out every time I BEGGED him to take it. Well last week he was having a teething moment and Brenden found this in the toy box and shoved it in his mouth, and its been there ever since! Lol. He calls it Sassy. And if he doesn't have it he just does this pitiful 'Saaasssseeeeeey??!!" until you give it to him. Then he giggles with delight and says "SAS-eeeeey!" and pops it in his mouth. He sleeps much better now that he has it so I am not fighting him too hard on it. I just find it funny that it took him 15 months to decide he likes it... no.. LOVES it! 

Bailey had her 2nd birthday party while we were there. Brenden was at the party and figured out if you put a balloon on the intake register for the heating/cooling system, it sticks (as long as the heat pump is running). He kills me how clever he is sometimes.

They had some yummy Mickey Mouse cake and lots of fun and games!

It was a great visit and thanks to Sassy, both boys did great on the drive up and back. It was GREAT!

For Christmas this year I wanted to keep my wish list small. It was really all about the kids for me. When my computer crashed ages ago I lost my copy of photoshop elements (never buy software from HP with your new computer, they do not give you a backup disk and will charge you a service fee to 'repair' the loss!) I found a copy of elements 8 on Ebay for a good price so I got that for myself (yes, I am my own Santa!) and asked Sean to buy me a book 'Photoshop Elements for the digital photographer' as we agreed to keep it down to one small gift each for us. I have to say that I am almost ashamed at how little I used my prior copy of Elements 6. I don't mean I didn't use it frequesntly, but did I use it for the full potential in photo editing it gave me? NO! I used mostly the canned features and basic fixing. This book teaches you how to use different techniques to turn your ok looking photos into something great. I LOVE this book. I can't put it down. Its in a textbook sort of layout and I find myself jumping all around and reading things over and over again. I really wanted a copy of CS5 or something fancy like that but just couldn't justify spending that kind of money right now. I decided that I wanted to learn how to walk before learning to run a marathon. I realized I hadn't really ever mastered PSE so why upgrade to PS CS5 just to do nothing with it like I did with PSE 6?

So in addition to my blog about my family I'd like to share my journey through photoshop. Obviously to anybody who is a photo editing wiz, this will be boring :) but I am just finding myself amazed at all the new cool knowledge that I am filling in my head. See I am a programmer and an artist, so this really feeds both the creative and the nerdy parts of my brain all at once. Stay tuned for my photoshop journey....

Blog slacker = ME!

I have no real excuse for my slacky blogging. I just haven't MADE the time to update it. It will seem like only a few days have gone by but then I look and a whole month of no updates will have gone by. SORRY!!! If it makes you feel better I will put a LOT of pictures in this blog :)

We made the annual trip up to WV for Thanksgiving. We went to my Mom's house in Elkins instead of my Aunt's house in Martinsburg. Every other year my stepfather has to work on Black Friday so we have to alternate the location. The location isn't such a big deal as long as we get to visit with family. The boys did very well all things considered. Its a long drive and the car is no place for 2 wild toddlers to be for 6 hours. I did let them out of the car halfway to play at a McDonald's playland and that helped make the second half of the trip go a little better.

The kids had fun playing with their 'uncle' Will (who is too young to really be an uncle so we call him whatever he wants to be called... cousin, brother, etc.. it doesn't matter!)

Logan had fun playing with Geema's pots and pans.

The boys also took a moment to pull all of the pillows off of Geema's couch and roll around on them. (more of this action to come later)

Big Lots had these nice recliners on sale on Thanksgiving Day so I got Mom and Al one as an early Christmas present. They had to wait until all the kids were gone before they could actually use it!

After a great visit with my mom we went to Milton WV to visit with my college friend Erin. Our kids always have such a wonderful time playing together. Brenden was very happy that Bailey played so much with Logan because it gave him some much needed alone time. However he did enjoy hanging out with Bailey too.

Such Sweethearts!

Logan had fun eating dry cereal from a bowl with a spoon.

We got home and put up our Christmas tree and the boys loved it. We have to keep the bottom 2 feet of the tree toddler-friendly. No hooks or glass balls at the bottom. I tried to skip the icicles this year but there are a few stragglers from last year still stuck on the tree and Logan likes to collect them and try to put them back up on the tree.

Brenden enjoys jumping on pillows. One day I walked into the living room and noticed all of the back pillows of the couch, love seat and chair were all missing and then I saw off to the side where they all are.

I took a few Christmas pictures of the boys. I just love their coordinating outfits from Crazy 8. I don't do the exact matching outfits if I can help it. Since they are so close in age I feel like its important to keep their identities separate. Its probably more important to me than to them.

Love this picture of my sweet Logan. I didn't have the flash quite right on my camera but this was one of the few cooperative pictures I got out of him so I had to keep it!

And my super-handsome Brenden... He always takes such good pictures. He is so animated with his face and fairly cooperative so its easy to get an adorable smile out of him.

This ended up being my Christmas card photo. The boys love to yell so when I couldn't get them to smile I resorted to a yelling contest :) I love it because they look like they are singing Christmas Carols (and was able to find a fa-la-la card theme from Sam's!)

Lol.. not sure what this expression is, but my guess is it was a quick snapshot before he jumped off the stool and took off running again. He does NOT like to pose.

The boys figured this pose out all by themselves and I thought it was very cute. Too bad I couldn't get Logan to smile! At least he's not crying.

Some more close-ups of my future heart-breaker.

Logan wanted to be 'all done' with the photo shoot so he put his hands up in the air using his sign language for 'all done' and proceeded to storm off of the set. As my mom said... 'such a diva' ..  so true, so true

However even if I couldn't get him to smile, I was able to get an adorable moment of eye-contact and snowflake ornament eating.

Updates on the boys:

Brenden
Brenden is proceeding to the age of 3. Didn't he just turn 2. In just over a month we'll be celebrating the big # 3 for him. I am continually told by his teachers just how smart he is and how much he amazes them. He knows all of his letters and numbers (has for quite some time). He (mostly) knows his right from his left. He is learning Spanish in school and can count up to number 15 in Spanish! He is totally a mama's boy and loves to demand my attention ALL of the time. He tells his daddy that they are mama's hugs and kisses. He wants me to do everything for him and nobody else. Although I enjoy the attention, its also important for him to know that other people can tend to him because sometimes Mommy is sick or sleepy or has her hands full with something else. He is really into the Wonder Pets right now but still thinks Micky Mouse is a pretty cool dude too. He still doesn't like to eat but we are working on being a little more strict with his dinner these days and requiring him to take at least ONE bite of everything on his plate. Some days he turns his nose up before even trying it and after a long battle he finally tries it and ends up cleaning his plate because he likes it after all. He has been eating baby spinach salads which is such a wonderful sight since he hates all things vegetable. He is very much a gentle soul and for the most part a very happy and loving little boy.

Logan
Logan just had his 15 month checkup. He is in the 60th percentile for his height and 25th percentile for his weight. I was surprised about the weight because his fat rolls are quite abundant (unlike his brother who has little bird legs and no caboose at all!) He is finally getting more teeth. He got 4 teeth at around 9-10 mos and nothing has come in ever since. Finally the little teeth are breaking through. Its been tough on his as he has a runny nose and is drooling constantly and doesn't want to eat anything hard at all (he even turned down a cookie!) He hangs on the freezer door and begs for Popsicles all day long. I will be happy when the worst part of these two teeth are over .. but I know there are more to come.
Logan will need to see a urologist. He was diagnosed with a hydrocele at birth and it has not cleared up and may even be worse now. The hydrocele causes fluid to fill in the sac around the testicle causing it to become enlarged. It was slightly enlarged as a newborn/infant but it is significantly enlarged now. So we will get that set up and see what comes of that. I hope it will not involve any sort of painful procedure to correct. He doesn't seem to be in any pain, but it can progress to something that is painful and/or uncomfortable if left untreated. He is using all kinds of words now and is picking up language way faster than  Brenden ever did. I think its a difference in personality. Logan has always been very expressive and Brenden likes for you to nurture him and ask him what he needs. Logan demands it lol. Some of his latest words : Jacket, school, outside, plate, cup, cereal, mess, more, all done, bye bye, dada, baby, yeah, no, cookie, cracker, surprise, peek a boo, mine, ball, slide, please. He loves to play patty-cake and for me to sing songs to him (always ends with him clapping and saying YAY!) He is running and is trying his hardest to jump (oh yah, that's another word he can say). He continues to try to catch up to his brother's development as fast as he can.

I love that I have 2 totally different little boys. Its just so much fun to experience motherhood for a second time and see everything happening a completely different way. I love their individuality and personalities. I love that they fight one minute and hug and kiss the next.. SUCH a little brother/big brother mentality. I love that Brenden says "yay Logan" when he hears Logan using new words. The other day Logan was waiting by the toaster oven for his waffle (oh, there's another word he can say) and kept saying "beep beep beep" because he knows that's the sound the toaster makes when the waffle is done. Then Brenden says "Yay Logan! Mama, he says "beep beep beep" Yay Logan!" Its so sweet!!

Well with Christmas right around the corner I hope to be back sooner than later with a blog full of Christmas cheer!

Halloween and fall fun

My hard drive crashed on me a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to update the blog in a long time. It was really stressful as I was SO worried about losing all of my pictures. Luckily the data was recovered, a new hard drive was installed, and I have rid myself of Windows Vista and am now running Windows 7. My computer is running much cleaner and faster now. I am going to invest in an external hard drive so I can back up my pictures regularly so I don't have to worry about this happening again!!!

My boys are getting so big. Brenden is a little boy now. I can't even call him a toddler. He's so independent (when he wants to be) and thinks his way is the ONLY way. He really teaches you patience! He is very particular, very demanding, and very LOUD haha. He hasn't figured out that its rude to interrupt. He likes to dominate the conversation by volume.

Logan continues to grow at an exponential rate. He is my little Chubbers (his nickname). That boy loves to eat and has more chubby rolls on him than Brenden ever had. Logan officially has thicker thighs and a bigger rear end than Brenden does! Look at those chubby cheeks and curly locks of hair!

I love this picture. He's watching the Wiggles and putting his "hands in the air" so he can rock-a-by his bear. Its too cute. He will clap and shush along with the song.

I treated myself with a new lens for my camera for my birthday. I got a Nikon 50mm f1/1.4 Prime lens. It took me a while to pick something but eventually decided I wanted a lightweight fast shutter wide aperture lens. It takes really crisp clear pictures. Its hard to get used to the wider apertures but its fun to play with. I end up with a lot of depth and clarity in the pictures.

It doesn't have any zoom on it, or as a friend told me - it has "Sneaker Zoom" .. i.e. zoom in, run forward - zoom out, run away. I like the depth in this picture of Brenden. His face has such clarity and the rest of his body quickly fades into the background.

 

Here is Logan sitting inside of one of the bar stools in the kitchen

And here is what a fast shutter can do for you. Air Logan!

Another beautiful picture of Logan!

Turns out that Brenden loves Logan's bounce house more than Logan does! Logan has a short attention span and gets bored with it quickly where Brenden will BEG for it every day. It was a good investment!

We took the kids to the Renaissance Festival again this year. They had a nice time, but with 2 mobile babies Mommy and Daddy got tired quickly! Here is Brenden playing on the climber/slide.

And his favorite attraction "the painted lady" - she has a big dress/blanket/hat and tells stories while she lets the kids paint her. The little ones find her SO fascinating!

For Halloween this year Brenden was a fire fighter. My mom had given me the jacket and pants and I spent 2 bucks on a hat. I love a cheap Halloween costume!

Logan got to wear Brenden's old Peanut costume. I love this costume!! Logan didn't want to wait to eat his candy (I later had to take this away because he managed to bite right through the wrapper! He will eat ANYTHING.. leaves, paper, stickers... lol

The boys had a great Halloween. Brenden LOVED going door to door and getting candy. After the 3rd house he wasn't interested in eating the candy, he just loved the attention and the fact that people gave him stuff. By the end of the night he was trying to walk into people's houses and just help himself. He is in a gymnastics class now and loves it. He asks me all the time now to go to 'nastics' and play. He is really developing his imagination. The other day he was playing with the soap dispenser and a washcloth in the bathtub. He kept telling the soap it was going nite nite and would put the washcloth over it. Then he loudly exclaims "Hey Towel!!! You hurt Soap!!" and then gave the soap dispenser a kiss and told it "all better!" I laughed so hard. He's so funny!

Logan is sick*ish* right now. His eyes have been draining something terrible and they look just awful. I took him to the Dr because daycare was concerned that he had something contagious. However it clearly wasn't pink eye as the whites of his eyes were fine. He had no fever, no loss of appetite (hahah.. as if that ever happens anyway!). Just really goopy draining eyes. The Dr asked if he had blocked tear ducts as a baby. I told her yes, they had been blocked up until he was about 9.5 months old. I was worried they would never open. She said that most likely whats happening is they are still partially blocked and anytime he has any sort of sinus irritation, it clogs his ducts up and it has no way to drain out of his eye (its the 'drain duct' that's blocked) and so he ends up with these red, irritated, icky eyes. He is on a mild antibiotic now just to ease the eye discomfort, but she said he wasn't really sick/contagious so not to worry about that.

He's really talking more and more. He will say "eat" and point to his mouth. If you ask him if he wants to eat he RUNS to his high chair seat. He can say more and do the sign language for more as well. He says mama, Dada, baby, bye bye, peek a boo (tick-a-too), shoes... I know there are more words but that's all that I'm thinking of.. oh and thanks to his 2yr old brother he can say MINE lol.. but it comes out as Me me me me meeeeeee!!



Welcome Fall!

First I'll start on a positive note :) I'm SOOOOOOO glad Fall is finally here. I'll be the first to stand up and say I HATE being cold, but I have realized now, especially with kids, is I HATE being hot too!! We could hardly go outside the entire summer. It was too hot for the kids to play and the humidity here makes it that much worse. We still have some hot days going on but the heat index has gone down quite a bit and there's an amazing autumn breeze to keep the air cool. I love it!

We've had a rough couple of weeks. Logan started out with a mild cough. It only acted up at night. Then he suddenly started running a fever and was so lifeless. This is a kid that never slows down, even for an illness, so this bug really had me worried. He went to the Dr and she said his ears were clear but his sinuses definitely looked nasty and she'd put him on an antibiotic for a sinus infection. She suspected bacterial over viral because his symptoms came first, followed by a fever. She said viral usually starts w/ a fever followed by symptoms... an interesting factoid for future reference. 3 days into the antibiotic and he was still a pitiful sight. He was barely keeping the fever down between ibuprofen doses, he was vomiting and had diarrhea, he wasn't sleeping at night yet couldn't hold his head up either. I've never felt so helpless and heartbroken before. Finally on the 4th day the fever broke and he finally started getting better WHEW

Here he is one day in his swing trying so hard to fight sleep. He probably dozed in and out for about 3 straight hours this day. You couldn't lay him back because he'd get mad at you trying to help him sleep, so he kept falling asleep face-first on the tray. Poor baby!

Sunday we went to our friend Asa's first birthday. Poor Logan was too sick to attend but big brother Brenden represented the Pray kiddos for him. He had a great time and was SO well behaved.

Love this picture of my little man! He found his pockets and thought he was so cool (which he is!)

Logan's first day back at school after being sick did not turn out so well. He was still pretty groggy from not eating well and his balance was horrible. Well he fell down on the sidewalk of the playground and totally tore up his nose. If you saw the playground you'd see that 90% of it is artificial turf and there's a tiny section of sidewalk for the kids to ride car-type toys and push walkers on. Of course that's where he'd fall ... sigh.. its hard to wipe a scabby nose (factoid #2). You can see the center of his forehead joined in the battle against the sidewalk. Nothing will make you freak out more than to come into daycare to get your recovering baby - hoping he had a great day - and see him covered in scabs and bruises :( I know it wasn't their fault - they don't have a 1:1 ratio of kids/teachers, but it still hurt me to see him hurt.

Even roughed up, he's still a cutie pie. I remember Brenden wearing this shirt -- it really doesn't seem that long ago. I can't believe it already fits Logan!

Mr Grumpy Pants (I want goldfish for dinner!!!! Don't tell me no!!!!)

And here is Brenden before school this morning. It was share a pumpkin day in his class, so he brought in what he refers to as his "pumpkin ball" -- its just a stuffed pumpkin, but since its round in his mind its also a ball.

Logan is developing his language and also able to react to vocal commands (like "sit down!" often repeated in the bathtub numerous times!) He says ball and if he sees you eating he will come up to you with his mouth open like a baby bird and say "biiiii biiiiiiii" which means Bite! and then he makes this funny loud chomping sound when he takes a bite. I'll have to get a video of it. Its too funny to explain. He will give hugs and kisses and likes to play peekaboo and dance. He loves singing along with the Wiggles just like his brother. They are too funny to watch sing and dance together. He likes for his daddy to toss him up in the air and while he's up there he will laugh and put his hands over his eyes. Its so strange and yet funny at the same time. We can't figure out if he just doesn't want to watch, or having his hands over his eyes just makes it more thrilling. He laughs the entire time and throws the biggest fit when daddy stops.

Brenden is talking up a storm. He wakes up with a big teethy smile on his face and chatters away from the moment his eyes open. He's all about saying "what's your name? Whats my name? Whats your name" -- some of the little girls in his class do this and now he's doing it too. He continues to be so smart. In the hallway at his school they made silhouettes of the kids in his class and put everybody's name on them and he was able to identify about 80% of his classmates based on the name he read. You could tell it was more recognition of the first letter of the name, but it was still impressive for a 2yr old. He loves to count things and is just such a silly boy. He has his 2 yr old moments, but mostly he's just a bright-eyed energetic sweetheart of a boy. We are not making a whole lot more progress in the potty department. Some days are good, some aren't. Its actually quite hard to train him with Logan because there are no bathrooms on the main level (split level home) so I have to go upstairs to take B to the bathroom and that means either leaving Logan  unattended or bringing him into the bathroom with us, which is often too distracting for Brenden. So I know I don't push him to go every 30-40 minutes like I should simply because its difficult to do with Logan the trouble maker getting into everything the minute I take my eyes off of him! We'll get there in time. The goal is to have him 100% diaper-free before age 3, which is what daycare prefers as well. Wish me luck!