Wednesday 29 March 2006

Hold it! Flash, Bang, Wallop!

I was reading a photography magazine the other day and was struck by how much processing gets done to pictures after they've been taken. But the article gave some great tips on how to do the same things to your own photos.

So I decided to have a go with a few of my own pictures - and took the liberty of playing with a couple that I found on my Mum's Flickr Photostream.

I was amazed at how easy it was. Most magazines tell you how to achieve results using Adobe Photoshop. But that's far too expensive for my wallet and I've always found that there are plenty of ways of achieving more or less the same effects in JASC's Paint Shop Pro for much less money (although it now appears to have been taken over by Corel!).

Here are four examples of the sort of thing you can do. It's all very simple indeed. Click on the photos to see them larger.

Avignon Sky

Before:
After:


River Thames at Sunbury

Before:
After:


Fishing on the River Vistula

Before:
After:

Kathleen in the Snow

Before:

After:

There are a few more examples in my Treatments set on Flickr.

4 comments:

jomoore said...

These are terrific! I've had a go myself with Paintshop Pro, with some good results. I have some nice arty black and white pictures of Italian buildings and bridges, which look rather fancy now they're printed and framed and on my wall. And I made a nice sepia print of one of your wedding photos that Thomas took, and put in a bit of sunbeam-ness to add that extra something.
However, the stuff that you've done is much cleverer. You'll have to give me a lesson... :)

petercmoore said...

Oh yes, your Italian pics are great (maybe you should post them on your blog...)

I did mean to add some comments above on how I achieved the results... Maybe I'll get around to that on Thursday, if I'm not too busy at work!

Delmonti said...

I found Paint shop pro too expensive.... Try Ulead's PhotoImpact (it's on version 11 at the moment and costs £50). I've used it since version 7 and it really is the dogs. Ulead also do on-line tutorials for it.

meljoy said...

that is very freaking cool! I will be getting adobe photoshop for free (my friend has copies of it). I can't wait to use their photo merge and other schtuff. I plan on getting a new digi cam too. This looks fun!

-mel