photoshop before and afters

I have a girl-crush. This is the first time I think I've ever admitted, or even felt, that I have a full-on girl-crush. Who is it, you ask? Ree Drummond, Pioneer Woman, of course!

I know, a lot of you have probably heard of her and already fallen in love with her, especially if you love photography. And while I do love photography, I haven't had the fortune to be able to afford a fancy-dancy camera yet, so I kind of just stalk photo blogs, dreaming that I will one day take photos like that :)

Well, thanks to PW and her super-cool way of explaining photoshop editing that doesn't make you want to curl up in a ball somewhere, I have ventured out into the post-processing world, full-on!

Now, just a reminder, I use photoshop all day, every day - so I should be pretty good at this stuff, right? Wrong. I use photoshop to layout websites and cut out products, blah, blah, blah. But I rarely use photoshop for, well, photos. Now that I have been forced to choose photos for my wedding album that will please all sides of the family, I have been working more and more on choosing the photos I want to include in my and K's own album. The "family-pleasing" album will be edited and laid out by my professional photographer, but my personal album will be edited and assembled by yours truly ;) Not to mention the 2,473 photos I brought back from our Beijing honeymoon (that's not an exaggeration, that's exactly how many photos I took)!!! So, after that long explanation, that's why I've been trying to learn more and more about photo editing for my own personal use.

So, below are two before-and-afters, done by following this PW tutorial.

My sis on my wedding day (yes, she only has on one set of fake eyelashes in this pic, lol):
I wanted to smooth her skin, sharpen her eyes, bring out her highlights, and blur the background a bit to give the illusion of a "depth of field". Oh, and a boost of color doesn't hurt ;)

And me in Hooter's in Beijing (yes they have a Hooter's, no the girls don't have hooters):
This one's a little more subtle - with the background blurred just a bit, my skin smoothed, and eyes sharpened a touch.

before


after


As I mentioned, both used the same "techniques"/"process", but the second one is just a little more subtle. I still wanted it to look like a snapshot, just not with my shiny face distracting the poor viewer, lol. The first, of my sis, I wanted to "stylize" a bit more because, after all, she is a drama queen (if you couldn't tell by the photo).

So, not too shabby, huh? I'm so excited to try more and more editing to take my "eh." photos to "oh!" photos! Yay!

nicky

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the one with the birthday

This past weekend was K's 29th birthday (Saturday). Yes, he's gettin' old (just kidding, honey ;) ). Anyway, everyday this weekend we celebrated K's birthday with each of our families and each other.

Friday we had dinner at K's parents' house. K got lots of cash (which came in handy the next day at the market), and we got to spend time with this cutie:



The next morning (K's birthday), we headed down to the Soulard Farmers' Market. It was gorgeous weather out, so it seemed like everyone was at the market - including Mike Shannon!!! Yes, as we were buying our steaks for dinner later that night, Mike Shannon was in the meat market picking out some steaks as well, just hours before the game! I know - you're asking, "Where's the picture?". I'm a bad blogger and didn't take my camera with me that morning, so no pic of Mike :( But here are some pics of a few things we picked up:

Fresh-cut flowers with some PW actions (the first is after running PW's boost action with a little tweaking, and the second is the vintage action - love!):

Since we got back around noon, we decided to use our thick-cut, rind-on bacon for BLTs - mmmmm...



After lunch, we walked up to Pets in the City to get Loki a late birthday present - we got her a UFO-type toy that you put treats in then screw it shut so she can try to get them out, and some treats to put in it. And since it was her birthday, they gave us a free food bowl, an extra bag of treats, scoop and frisbee! Here is Lok enjoying her new toy (which she subsequently shredded that same day!):



Then, I decided to make some yummy cupcakes, even though K isn't a huge cake fan (or desserts for that matter). After one batch of plain cupcakes, I thought it'd be fun to stick some of the strawberries we got at the market inside the cupcakes. It was delish! (If I do say so myself ;))




Later, we enjoyed our steaks, sweet corn and sweet potatoes - all from the market and all cooked on the grill on an absolutely beautiful day:



Then we hung out on our patio underneath our super cool candlelier - it puts off just the right light (please ignore the fluorescent light on in the picture, lol):




So, that wraps up Saturday. On Sunday we had my cousin's baby's baptism to go to. Afterward we got to meet their new puppy, Hamilton!



After stuffing ourselves with chicken kabobs and chips and dip, we headed home to Soulard. We met up with my parents at Nadine's after the Cards/Cubs game and had some more yummy food (I had a spinach and mushroom quesadilla and my mom had a feta burger - mmm mmm mmmm). Kevin got more presents, including a gift cert to Lucky, his favorite jeans. We headed back home and cut into the "small" ice cream cake:



Ok, well, after writing this post, I feel even more full than when I ate all this food, so maybe the next post needs to be about exercise? LOL.

Happy birthday, babe!

nicky

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