~Birthday Giveaway~

Is anyone interested in a $10 Starbucks Gift Card?

From today until June 15th, you can enter to win.... if you'd like to win the Starbucks Gift Card, here are your three chances to enter:

1. Simply leave a comment telling me about your best birthday present ever. (you don't have to be registered, you can just leave an anonymous comment, but be sure to leave contact information)

2. If you are a subscriber, you get an extra entry for the contest! Just make a second comment that says "subscriber." THANK YOU for reading my blog! OR...If you're new here and would like to subscribe, you can and then leave a comment to get your second entry.

3. If you have a blog, you can blog about this giveaway. Then, leave a third comment, with your blog address so I can come visit.

I know this is totally unrelated to my photography stuff, but hey, its my birthday and I can do what I want now that I am 30! (or will be in a few more hours) So, happy birthday to me!!!

The fine print:
This giveaway ends Monday, June 15, at 9:00pm PST. I will draw the name of the winner using the random number generator at Random.org.

The winner will be contacted by email as well as announced here on Tuesday, June 16. If the winner does not email me with his/her mailing address within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen.

A Sweet Moment

The other day my oldest daughter was having a hard afternoon. After listening to about an hour of off and on, whining and fussing, I had had enough. (Mean mom!) So I sent her outside to talk to daddy. A few minutes later I look out the window to see this....

it totally melted my heart. I have an awesome husband who is a great daddy to his girls!

I used an action from Coffee Shop Actions. They have some great free actions for Photoshop and PSE. The one I used here is Creamy Toffee Latte. It just gives the picture a sweet soft look.

A little insider info...

I had a lot of questions and comments on this picture. Which is one of my favorites, btw. So, I got the idea from the I ♥ Faces blog (well, and lots of other photo blogs) to do a little tutorial. First of all, I use photoshop to edit my pictures. I don't run a lot of actions on all of my shots, but I do like to adjust some of them here and there.

To start...this little girl is just adorable...so that is where the picture begins its journey to greatness. (ha!) The picture started out with a cute expression, and good focus, but the color was a little gray. (Blah) I shoot in raw, so I can adjust the color before I even get started on editing the jpeg image. Though on this particular shot I just started with it straight out of the camera.

So I used CoffeeShop (free!) color pop action. There are several choices from decaf to triple shot. On this picture I used double shot color pop.

I basically just follwed the steps and clicked okay a lot. I adjusted a few things here and there after I had run the action once. But that would just depend upon your individual picture and the look you are going for.

Once I flattened the layers I then ran a free portrait pop action. (If you click on the link, scroll down to portrait pop) It works on the eyes and anything else you would really like to stand out. (Eyelashes, eyebrows, lips, hair etc.)

On this action you can adjust how much you want the high pass to affect your picture, the action automatically suggests between 5-20. If I only have one person in the picture (and the eyes are a large part of it) I typically use a higher number, closer to 20. I think I used a 19 on this.

I like to use a soft brush that is just a bit smaller than the section I am using it on. (In this action you use a white brush and you can adjust the opacity to your liking. I used it at 100% and typically do for kids. On adults (if I use the action) it seems like it has to be brough down to around 50% opacity.)

I then flattened the image again and saved as a JPEG.

The original picture, straight out of the camera is on the left, the edited picture is on the right.

Here is the final shot....