My #FixItFriday edits & tutorials - Photo Games Week #8

@gabyoraa

How to get into a creative state of mind on demand? It doesn't always work, despite all your efforts. But what I normally do is some initial association.

My first edit was @gabyoraa's photo of her cousin. The post contained another photo that had a bit of an occult feel to it. And of course the first word that popped into my head was "witch" (no offence Gaby's cousin). "Wouldn't that photo be amazing if she was wearing a cape on top of it all?"

And so I went looking for a cape and found one that would do the trick. Next was that way too bulky pick. "It must have special powers, or else I wouldn't use it!", I thought. I needed sparkles badly!

So I ran into something new when looking for a tutorial on YouTube. The super annoying "buy our actions and brushes" videos where you get really excited watching the video, to only discover that these plugins they were using are far from freely available.

After wasting too much time, I decided to go with How to Create Sparkle Effect in Photoshop, by Photoshop Tutorials by Layer Life. All you need to do is create a sparkle-shaped brush, adjust some settings and draw your sparks.

It's almost magic...

@sjarvie5

I was relieved to see that I am not the only one with tilted horizons. I can never resist taking a quick photo of a lighthouse when I see one, so I loved this photo of @sjarvie5. However, the first edits had already shown up and they were so good that I wanted to do something completely different.

"What is a lighthouse without light?", came to mind. And before I knew it I was watching the video How To Add Light Beams To A Lighthouse by Brendan Williams. With the light beams, I also needed to turn day into night, a little. This was quite a challenge because it ruined almost everything that was beautiful in that picture. But I wanted to do something different and so I stuck with it. The same lighthouse by night was done.

@bil.prag

I told @bil.prag that he was probably on a boat for #whereisitwednesday and I decided to stick with that theme. In the background info, he shared that you could only rent rowing boats on this water, and so it happened. I found a picture of a guy on a boat and just dropped him in the water. But not without a tiny facelift! Now @bil.prag has a photo of himself on the water where this amazing photo was taken.

For the reflection of the boat on the water, I looked into videos on YouTube. But in the end, it seemed easier to just do it my way. So no tutorials here!

@derekkind

If you want to win @derekkind's edits, all you need to do is include unicorns. But where to leave it? I love this shot of Moraine Lake so much that I sort of wanted to do a "normal" edit and play with the colours of the mountains, trees and lake.

But there is a story behind the cameras in the bottom left corner. I could have just cropped them out. Or turned them into an even bigger nuisance. And at that moment I knew where to put my unicorn...

No special effects here, so no tutorials. I wish I can see that spot one day!

@caseygrimley

Last week, I had a lot of fun editing @jarvie's Milky Way shot. So as soon as @caseygrimley released his challenge, I got excited. Another Milky Way! I went for the same tutorial (I can't remember all that after one try) and go for a different feel. In this photo, the sky isn't supposed to take all the attention away from the woman. But at the same time, it shouldn't be the other way around either. So it was tricky enough to keep that balance in there but pop the colours too. Other things that I did was mostly noise reduction related.

I think it is time that I see a Milky Way with my own eyes so that I know what to aim for while editing. It is super tempting to make a huge spectacle out of it, but I bet that if you have seen it for real, that just doesn't do it justice. So keep an eye on my Milky Way edits and you will notice when I saw my own .

@vtravels

I considered putting an Easter Bunny in the field, checking out the newly weds. But I don't always have to try to be funny. So I went for a more normal edit. No tutorials used for this one. I created a mask for the couple to be able to brighten them a little and blur the background. I removed the distracting lens flare, cropped away some negative space and thought it was good to go. Not a lot of work needed for this gorgeous photo.

@jpphotography

The last one of this week is by @jpphotography. It was the first one posted though. I just had to sit for this one a little. The terracotta reminds me of landscapes that are just slightly too warm and that I'd rather not visit. But hey, I can do it on my computer. No sweat!

There were a few things that I wanted to fix first: chromatic aberration when the mountains touch the sky. And second: that boring sky. After that was done, I wanted to let the houses stand out a little more. First I thought that I should go repaint them one by one. But there were just too many. And I am lazy. So I adjusted some colours and contrasts, gave the whole photo a little too much HDR sauce and was happy enough. At least it looked like it recently rained!