You know what working on a Sunday requires? Coffee. My natural instinct on Sunday is to be a bum. I just wanna wear pajamas, not shower, watch TV, take naps and bum around. But since I had to run some errands (Walmart and Target on a Sunday are NOT fun places to go, btw) and get un-bummy, that required energy. These little coffee drinks are sooo tasty. It’s powered me through a solid 2 hours of editing photos. Woo!

I also has some sidekicks to keep me on my feet:

That’s Vader (as in, Darth Vader). She’s the dog we are dog sitting. She follows me around everywhere I go. Normally Leon and Vinny do that but since she does it, they don’t. My dogs are lazy, what can I say

Vader misses her sister Obi and her parents, I can tell. I’m trying to cure that with lots of doggie treats but I think all that’s doing is making her girlish figure a little more curvy

Right now I’m taking a mini break from working to do a little blogging and get some dinner.

Here’s what Vinny thinks of this blogging business:

Talk to my foot, lady.

Have a good Sunday

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Productive weekends rule!
2. Sick Supa Spy
3. Meet Vinny!

We skipped the gym Saturday & Sunday (today) but since we went every day of the work week and ran three nights after work as well, we aren’t beating ourselves up too bad! Plus, we were really productive:

Saturday I cleaned my house. Seriously cleaned. vacuumed the entire downstairs (even though I did that two days prior) and upstairs—including the stairway , scrubbed my kitchen counters and sink, washed the kitchen windows, hand washed my hardwood floors (on my hands and knees but of course!), washed the throws for the couch and washed the decorative pillows, polished the furniture, cleaned the guest bathroom and did laundry. It felt good to have the house “sparkling” clean for one day:

A view of the kitchen from the dining area. Yes, drawer faces are missing as well as the crown moulding. All of that is laying about 3 feet over, un-pictured   I wish you could smell in photos because my house smelled clean. I mean it normally smells good—a mix of coffee, laundry detergent and perfume—it doesn’t usually smell like cleaning products—fresh!

Even though I was shooting boudoir photos at my home on Saturday, I didn’t pick up my puzzle. Hey, it took like a week to find all the pieces for the edges! I’m dedicated to this thing, even if it takes me a year. Or longer.

A partial view of the living room from the back hallway. If I turned around where I was standing when I took this photo, I’d be faced with the laundry room on the right, a door to the garage straight ahead, and a bathroom and guest bedroom suite (separately) to my left. They remain un-pictured because you guys have seen them so much before/our office (guest bedroom suite) is NOT decorated at all!

Here’s a shot of the living & dining:

Those pillows in the chair are nekkid! Sorry the nudity! I took their velour maroon covers off for a wash (the second in one week). What can I say, when you got doggies, you wash stuff way more often.

After I cleaned the house, I needed a COLD shower.. I was so sweaty! Since Matt was working in the back yard, the dogs had to be inside. And since I was going to be in the shower, I had to lock them out of my bedroom. If they aren’t locked out, they will just watch me shower. Seriously. I know it doesn’t sound creepy but it is. LOL

I checked on them before I dried my hair and Vinny was just chillen:

See the chubby grey lump in the bottom left? He was refusing to share the big bed with Vinny so Leon was off pouting by himself. He got over it when I picked up their collars and they realized they were going to Grandma’s house. Vinny doesn’t know what the hell “grandma” is or why it’s exciting, but if Leon freaks out then Vinny does too.

Matt took them to his parents house to play so us girls could have the house to ourselves. Out of respect to my “client” (a friend of a friend, but we’ll call her client to sound cooler, okay? ), I can’t post any of the uber-sexy ones here but I can leave you with an idea of how the shoot went:

Amazing! This girl (yeah, she has a name but I’m sure she doesn’t want me revealing it here!) had a killer body, looked great in all of her lingerie, and made it so much fun to work with! As always, there are things you would do different after looking through the photos (for me, try and regulate the light better and use my tri-pod more.. and I need backdrops, people!) but all in all I was more than pleased with the photos that I ended up with. I took over 630 and I’m still narrowing down. They’re all so good it’s hard to choose which ones will be “the ones”

After editing the photos for a few hours, I took a mini-nap because I was exhausted from the day. It was only 20 minutes, but it helped. I also needed a nap because I believe I am a victim of SINUS INFECTION. Yep. I put all the symptoms together and it turns out my cold turned into a sinus thing. Ugh. My eyeball, nose and jaw have been throbbing for at least three days. Boo. I still managed to whip up a bomb dinner, cause I’m awesome:

Barbeque pork tenderloin with roasted asparagus! We’ve been diggin’ asparagus lately, regardless of it’s stinky side effect The tenderloin was really good and have a lot of amazing flavor. Luckily my friend Jillian had cooked it a few days previous and was able to tell me that it needed to be cooked at a higher temperature and a longer time than what was mentioned on the package. She was right! I cooked it at 375 degrees for one hour and it was just right!

Yummy! And the best part is that we have left overs! I just need to figure out what makes a good dish with left over pork tenderloin… any suggestions?

Unfortunately I had some “props” left over from the photoshoot on Saturday:

Knowing they’d probably tempt us too much, Matt and I threw all but four away and savored two each (Gluttonous, I know!) that evening. We parted with the chocolate and enjoyed the vanilla. So yummy!

Today (Sunday) has been low key. Editing photos, watching movies, and relaxing. Oh and sweeping up after the Dirt Trio, who ALL went into the PIT and then drug sandy and muddy feet back in. Thanks, guys! NOT!

I planned on laying out today but then took a nap on the couch instead. Vegging inside felt good and I didn’t need a tan anyway. Ghostly is coming back in, trust me.

Don’t ask why I am giving the camera such a creepy look. It’s like I’m stalking myself or something. Chill, Shelby!

Now I’m hanging with my peeps:

Another lap dog  

Back to editing photos! Hope everyone had a good weekend!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Long weekends rule
2. Sick Supa Spy
3. One busy Saturday…

Photoshop is a huge passion of mine and I just don’t spend enough time doing it. It’s definitely something for detail-oriented people and for people who have a lot of patience and want to learn. I mean, you can half ass things in Photoshop and they’ll look okay, but they won’t look amazing. I still consider myself a novice of Photoshop, because I’ve only been using it since 2006, and even then, I have only dabbled with select tools. Matt is the one who introduced me to Photoshop and he is amazing at it. He could make a living at it, if he wanted to. He is the most detail-oriented person when he uses Photoshop and because of that, his end results are truly amazing.

Here are just a few things that you can do using Photoshop:

Photos:

-Restore old photos

-Touch up photos

-Edit a poorly exposed photo to “make it pop”

-Create an HDR effect without an HDR lens

-Turn color photos into Black & White, or Sepia

-Make a photo look like a sketch or painting

-Give photos a “vintage” feel

-Colorize certain areas of photos

-Variances of cropping, editing, and “fixing” photos

Other:

-Create your own invitations, greeting cards, or postcards

-Create your own headers

-Create pieces of art from scratch

-Make newsletters, design magazines, etc

The possibilities are really limitless and I only named a select few! Seriously, there is so much you can do with Photoshop and if you have the money and time and want to learn more about it, I suggest you buy it and start watching online tutorials!

For all of us, it can be tempting to use quick filters at places like Picnik to make our photos look good (I even do from time to time), but it is much more gratifying to be able to create those same effects all by yourself using Photoshop.

As I have previously mentioned, I make all my own headers in Photoshop and although they aren’t the coolest (but aren’t they? ‘), I made them!

I am even working on a series of headers for my sister’s blog, CandyBarbie:

I don’t want to spill the beans about what she has planned for the headers I am making for her, but the only way you can be part of it is to check back at her site daily to make sure you don’t miss it

If anyone reading ever wants a custom header made, feel free to contact me anytime!

But if you use Photoshop, what’s your favorite tool?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Photoshop
2. Photoshop Tutorial 1: Editing Your Photo to be It’s Best
3. Reducing “Noise” in Photographs

Noticed anything different about my blog in the past week?

Yup, I’ve been playing around with looks for my blog. Using Photoshop and DaFont, I’ve been making new headers for the last couple of weeks. They aren’t anything fancy because I decided it’s more fun for you guys to see a bunch of new, fun headers than just a few really intricately designed ones. I mean, if it were me, I’d like to read a blog that is fun and always evolving.. what do you guys think?

When thinking of things that would make a neat header, I always think about this:

1. Something color and attention grabbing OR Something so mellow that the colors/picture relaxes you

2. Incorporating things I like (i.e. shoes, coffee, cute handwriting, etc)

3. Be different. Less “my blog name dot com” as the focus and more everything else.

Here’s the one I featured Saturday through Wednesday of last week:

This one is what I think of as “clean” because it’s pretty simple with a no-frills font and it lacks a lot of color. I realize this may go against the first two items on my list above, but I think it fits in with #3, because it’s moderately funny (hey, I’m not claiming it’s LOL funny I’m just saying it’s kind of cute to think that a blog is fueled by Coffee, right? ) and the attention is on the coffee, because of the red hearts.

Today I put up a new one, along with a new damask background (which I did NOT make, btw) which goes for the first thing on the list, which is color:

This was easy to make—just a few layers, some text, a few downloaded stamps, and voila—a funky, colorful header much different than my usual ones.

I have a few more in the bank but I don’t want to reveal all my secrets because then you’d never need to come back and check  

If it were up to you, what would be on my header?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Working on Site Wallpapers and Headers….
2. Butterscotch Gets a Home
3. Funnies

My Starting Image: Completely Unedited

This is going to be a short and sweet tutorial on how to optimize (make your photo it’s best without making it a new photo) your photo. I’m just going to talk about the basics: exposure, color, focus and cropping.

First, I want to open my photo in Photoshop and take a look at the exposure. Because of the sun-less skies above when the photo was taken, my camera worked extra hard to give the window enough light so, in turn, it is over exposed. This means the photo is too light.

Playing Around with Exposure AFTER the Fact!

Obviously it’s ideal to edit your exposure as you’re taking the photo but we’re not all professional photographers, are we? Here I’ve opened: Image > Adjustments > Exposure. You can slide the bars around to see if you can make your photo look better. Just a tip: The more you alter your photo’s color, the less detail will be visible. So try and keep lighting alterations to a minimum, if possible. With this photo, I played around with the Gamma a little and added some shadow to the photo. I was able to do this because I knew what I had in store: making the frame of the window pop. That means I knew it would be okay if some of the window lost a bit of detail, as the photo would be focusing elsewhere.

Next…

Making Your Selections

Using, if you select the “Boost” feature, your entire photo becomes over-saturated, thus giving it the “orange glow” or “bright colors” effect. With Photoshop, you can select which parts of the photo you’d like to manipulate the colors of, that way your whole photo does not have to change. To do this, I use the Polygonal Lasso Tool because I am able to both make small, detailed selections as well as large scale selections. Using the magnetic lasso tool does not allow for many adjustments and mass selection tools are the same.

In this photo, I am selecting the window frame to give it back some of that earthy-red color it had in person.

Side note: I am not cropping this photo in any way because I would not want to get any closer (zoom in) or change the angle. However, cropping is important when editing portraits of people, places, and things. Luckily I got to skip this step

See the dotted lines? That's what I've selected.

Lucky for me that I wanted to select relatively straight lines, since the tool gives me a straight line to select with. But take note that I’ve unselected the thin black space between the window frames. It’s important to pay attention to detail when selecting objects for color adjustments: one missed thing and your whole photo can look like a finger-painting experiment gone wrong

Now to play with the COLOR!

Now that I have my window frame selected, I am ready to add some red back to it. The keyboard shortcut to get to the “Hue & Saturation” menu is CTRL + U. I have no idea why! Or you can find it under Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation. Just play around with the sliders until you reach the perfect color. I just added enough back to you could still see the detail in the frame without it looking too obvious.

Now that I’m at my perfect red, I hit Shift + CTRL + I to select the INVERSE of my current selection. This selects everything EXCEPT the window frame. Now I make the background a less saturated gray color so that the red frame really pops. I don’t make it completely black and white because I want it to still look “real” when it’s finished.

This is where I ended up on the scales for the inverse

Now that I’ve played around with the hue & saturation of the “background” (non-focus area) of my photo, I see that it’s lost some detail. Note: for most photos I do not use a filter. In this case, I’ll be using a filter to add detail back since my starting photo had an exposure problem. I chose a photo that had exposure problems so you guys could see that filters in Photoshop can be used to restore, not just for cartoon-like effects.

Play around with the scales within the filter! They help!

For adding detail, I chose the Poster Edges filter which is found under Filter> Filter Gallery > Artistic > Poster Edges. Move the preset scales around to make the most of the available setting for said filter. Once the cracks underneath the frame start reappearing, I stop. If I keep going, the window begins to look like a comic book window, which I don’t want. Also note, I have unselected everything when using this filter which means the filter is being applied to the ENTIRE photo. I did this to add detail back to the foreground as well.

Side-by-side comparison!

Now, after adding a small white border and then a bigger black border (I don’t always do this… just when the mod strikes!) I put them side by side and compare… and I definitely like the end result far better! It may have too much filter applied to it but I like it!

Note: to add a border, you go to Image> Canvas Size and then go from there. That is one part of Photoshop that is pretty self-explanatory

So again.. Before:

My Starting Image: Completely Unedited

And… After:

After

I realize I didn’t go into detail about WHERE to find each tool and all that but I had found through personal experience it’s easy to find where things are on your own (that way it’s easier to remember when you need to find them again) and best when tools are explained (I only briefly explained) so you can learn the fundamentals and then teach yourself the details once you’ve mastered the basics

Hope this tutortial showed you just how few steps it takes to edit a photo in Photoshop. Not as fast as applying a filter in Picnic, but the end result can be whatever you choose! Not just a preset!

And P.S. This photo is one of a set of photos of a burnt down/falling/abandoned old house near my work. It’s totally creepy!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Photoshop
2. Photoshop: Faces of Amber Heard
3. Random Photographs, Part II