The first picture of my 3 daughters was taken with a Canon SLR 35mm camera then digitized using an Epson Perfection 1660 Photo Scanner. All editing for both images was done using Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 on a Windows XP PC (AMD Athlon XP 2600+, 160Gb Hard Drive, 1Gb RAM, 128MB Video Card)
First, I cropped the image to remove undesirable background elements and used several of the software’s automatic adjustments (Smart Fix, Lighting Levels, Contrast, and Color). Next, I zoomed in and used the Spot Healing Brush tool to clean up light specks from the scanner. I then applied a green filter to tone down the image and reduced the resolution to 96dpi. After receiving peer feedback, I cropped the image further then blurred and darkened the background. I used Blur to smooth out edges of subjects and darkened the bottom edge of the picture to create a shadow/spotlight effect.
The second picture was taken by my mother-in-law on a recent trip to Ireland. It was taken with a 35mm camera and converted to digital CD by a photo developing service. To begin, I cropped the image and reduced the resolution to 96dpi. I then applied several of the software’s automatic adjustments (Smart Fix, Lighting Levels, Contrast, Color, and Sharpen). Next, I applied the Color Burn tool to the sky and used the Blur tool on the background with the brush set to darken. I also used the Spot Healing Brush tool on some pixels that were too bright and used Blur to soften the edges between the foreground and background. Finally, I darkened some edge areas of the foreground, applied the Grain texture filter, and added the text.