Photo editing

So as you may remember, I wanted a headshot board outside the theater for To Think of Nothing. Bernie took the headshots on my stupid point-and-shoot camera, and though they came out by and large okay, I wanted them to look really slick. Black and white was an obvious option, but then I started messing around on Adobe Photoshop Elements to see if I couldn't make them a little crisper. I took forever trying to teach myself the rudiments of the program-- as I said, it's a good thing Liz Baessler is so cute, because I spent hours staring at her headshot. I mostly messed with the contrast, the shadows, and the brightness, but I also figured out how to smooth out small imperfections like flyaway hairs, under-eye circles, and acne. I actually think I got pretty decent, if decidedly uneducated and unprofessional, at editing photos such that they looked pretty good in one way or another.

Yesterday, in the depth of my doldrums, I decided to amuse myself by playing around with some other photos. Since I was depressed, I indulged myself by using pictures of my favorite subject-- myself. I made myself a new profile pic out of the shot of me in my Halloween costume posted in thefarowl*'s Facebook album. I then took it a step further and upped the blue content to make the color of my costume seem richer and to cool down the brightness of my skin and the wall behind me. I actually think I like that version, which I posted on DeviantART, better than the one I used in my profile.

I also decided to challenge myself by taking a picture of myself that I hated and making it into something that I liked. nennivian* had an album of shots she took at a girls night dinner we had, and I was shocked at my acne-blotched skin tone and unbelievable helmet hair. So I put it in grayscale, cut the frame in tight, erased my acne, and played with the contrast levels until I got something that looked kind of soft and artistic. Here is the end result:

It reminds me of those pictures people use on the last pages of retrospectives about the life of some famous dead person. Heh, when I die horribly and young, as I'm certain I will, and somebody does a book about me, here's a nice shot for the end.