Goofing off in photoshop - what do you think?

explain what you are doing for me? I'm not sure about the black? and the white stripes and half heads? are you trying to give a feeling of him swimming towards you?



(yes the background doesn't do them any favours!)

I was trying to make it look like a strip of film from an old home movie. (And I'm guessing it didn't work!)

Okay. One more attempt:

That could work if you find a quote and select a good strong font for it to fill up the space at the bottom. But a weakness of the image (IMO) was already that it was too horizontal, and having the "film" on both sides exacerbates that.

This one makes it clearer what you're doing, but I kind of liked the repeats in the first one. (I got it as soon as I saw it, maybe it's an American idiom?)

Never let it be said that I am not responsive!

I shortened the image and put in a quote (I sat here singing Kodachrome (how queer am I?) while I worked on the photo so I typed that in just for a sample. There is probably something better.

I'm glad you understood what I was doing, soz. It didn't really translate well into a small image against a conflicting color.

Hmmm.... here's a link where you can see them pretty much side by side (if you skip over the spider nest photo I took trying to identify the type of spider I have in my yard): http://photobucket.com/albums/v667/boomerangagain/? They look a little better there, than here.

Okay, another stab at it:

That's looking cool!

Yes, I really like that one, as well as the quote..

Now we're getting somewhere!

Thank you for the feedback. What an incredible and invaluable asset to have friends give you criticism.

Even though the photo was taken on film I felt guilty using "Kodachrome" since I transferred it to digital and photoshopped the hell out of it. That song is such a flashback to the era I'm trying to represent that perhaps it IS a good choice after all. That is the song that stuck in my head while working on it, anyway. (Plus I was remembering "all the crap I learned in high school" during that same era!)

I do think I need to go back and "scratch" so that I don't just have two scratches on each side in the less horizontal version. Surprisingly, scratching was the hardest part to get right on there.

I've got another photo I've been working on trying to get the color shifts right from an old photo -- it is harder than I thought it would be, making something look like it was shot in the 60s or 70s.

Reds linger, black shifts to greenish, parts go sepia. Eventually I'll get that one right and post it.

Boomer I liken the last one also - except lines threw the arms

You don't like the scratches?

Hmmm.....

I like the scratches and was thinking of adding more. With the grain and dust I thought the scratches worked....

Hmmm.....

Okay.

I was taking a shower and wondering "what am I trying to get at here...."

Do you remember the really overexposed scene in the swimming pool from "The Graduate"?

Or what about the really hotly lit, grainy, scenes from "Three Kings"?

That's the kind of feel I'm going for.

<making notes to hit the video store soon>

Does that make sense?

boomer is it a scratch or crease line? it might be because I think the lines are to straight and uniform looking

I'm trying to mimic the kind of mechanical scratches you would get from running film through a projector.

Here's the pumpkin patch shot recropped the way I think Vivien was talking about. I haven't yet decided which I like best. They feel completely different!

Put a big, fat eyelash curling up from the corner.

I think I like the second version of Mo and the lake better. The corner of the railing was distracting. This is more focused. The horizontal lines echo each other,.

I like both pictures and I'll probably have prints made of each version. The first one just feels a bit lonlier, the second more medatative. If that makes any sense at all.

Oh! Maybe I should add a dust blob or hair or something to increase the "home movie" feel! That's a great idea. Thanks, DrewDad!

hi - the brain couldn't have been in gear last night! it was late and I was tired.

Yes. I understand now what you want and the changes work brilliantly and I do like the film strip with several images. I agree with the narrowing of the image - better like that. It would work well with enlarging the image a little, so that Mo fills the frame slightly more, as he gets towards you to give a sense of movement as well

I think the scratches need to be different sizes and less even and bits of dust would be good. You could create them on a new layer in black on a white background, erase the white and then invert so that the marks are now white and then use filters to speckle them? You probably know all that better than me, or a better way to do it but that's how I'd attempt it.

You certainly come up with some lovely ideas.

Soz's idea of lettering would add to the effect - you could use your name or company name? or Mo's, and numbers

forgot to mention that I didn't use photoshop