Software tips follow photos.
Well, as everyone who follows this blog knows, I am an avid follower of Leanne Cole’s Photography blog. (That link takes you to her latest post.) Now, Leanne is a professional artist. I am an absolute beginner. So why do I offer tips? Because I think there is value in the little things an absolute beginner has to offer to other people who might think like her and be in the same stage. Even if it’s only one other person out there in the blogisphere, who thinks like Nia Simone and finds value in her little trial-and-error discoveries on the way to someday, 20 years from now, actually being any good.
Leanne has talked about Nik software and Silver Efex. I recently have acquired a Bamboo Craft. An amazing digitizing device. It was $50. (Another thing you’ll notice about Nia Simone’s blog, is everything has to be free or very inexpensive. I think actually, a lot of people can relate to that part!)
Anyway, the device is unbelievably wonderful and so is the software that came with it!!!! Corel Painter Essentials (heaven), Photoshop Elements (frightening, but I haven’t done the tutorial yet) and Nik Color Efex ( very hard to find – it is under the Layer menu in Photoshop.)
The photo in the Featured Image of this post was taken in the evening with my DLSR propped on the top of my Subaru. (Tripod anyone?) The first photo in the post has had the Color Efex layer applied. I lowered brilliance and warmth, merged the layers, and saved as JPEG. Then opened it in GIMP to scale it to 1000 pixels, my standard for this blog. I could not figure out how to do that in Photoshop.
Nicci Carrera 