Cool drinks at BJ's Chicago Pizzeria in Lahaina
(Maui 2007)
The blue water of the lagoon pool at the Sheraton
(Maui 2007)
Creativity: Photoshop
Photoshop can do amazing things for your if you're really good at it. If you just barely okay with it (like me), you can still put a fun spin on your photos.
I have a few books on Photoshop about how to fix and edit your photos, but I also have the Photoshop CS3 Photo Effects Cookbook that gives you a slew of ideas and tricks for making your photos more than just photos. After all, the CS part of CS3 does stand for Creative Suite.
I've never really been an artist, which is one of the reasons I think I like photography because it's easier to be inspired when most of the end result is on the other side of that lens. Still, with this book, I started finding a few artistic things that I could do with the photos I already had. And that's what you see here.
Just a Start
I was hooked on this color isolation technique for a few days, and after going through it for hours (it can be tedious), I moved on to other projects and only created about 8 or 9 of these. It is something I've been meaning to go back to at some point, just as a diversion from everything else.
If you check out the Software page in the Gears section, you'll also find a few neat applications that can help you do more with your photos after they're taken. One is a mosaic tool that lets you take one picture and a collection of thousands of other pictures and build one of those photo posters that you see which is made up of tiny photographs.
There is also another one being offered by Microsoft (for free, no less) that lets you upload multiple images of the same subject and it stitches them together in sort of a semi 3D effect. Still needs a little refinement, but again, fun to try.
Find More Photos
- Flickr Set: Colors of Maui