Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Blinders would be useful

Ambergris Caye, Belize - 2008



The dangerous thing about blogging is that you sure can neglect many things.  
Like paying the bills, picking up the house, going for walks 
(which by the way, The Professor and I did on Sunday ... it was a beautiful day!), 
running needed errands, exercising,
 and even brushing one's hair!

(But I always always always brush my teeth!)

On top of that, 
you begin to learn new editing techniques from fellow bloggers
and then blow through a whole afternoon just editing a few photographs.
And that's pretty much what I've been doing the last few days.  
Playing around with a couple of new editing tools.
Eiffel Tower, Paris -2007
The first one is a new Topaz product called Star Effects.
I spent several hours perusing through old photographs trying to find ones that were appropriate to use the star burst effect.  I guess I don't take too many night photos.
But that may change.

Park City, Utah - 2009




I can see that it can be a cool tool to use in certain photos.
Even when they aren't the best photos but you still kind of like them.
Like most of these that were taken with my little point and shoot through the years.
Not only can you use the effect on lights but also on sunsets and sunrises.

Sunrise over Hermanus, South Africa - 2002

And then, today, after completing these photos and doing a little blog hop, I happen upon Nancy's post over at A Rural Journal.  She did some texture work using Pixlr.  I have been wondering what I might use when Picnik goes away.  iPiccy is not bad and easy to use.  But Pixlr is so much more robust but isn't nearly as intuitive.  Nancy has a nice little tutorial in her side bar describing how to use Pixlr for textures.  And of course, I have spent over an hour just playing around with Pixlr.  My guess is it feels similar to Photoshop which is all foreign to me.

And while I was doing all that, somehow I ended up on another sight that offers a free trial called Perfect Layers for Aperture, Photoshop and Lightroom users.  A plug-in program that combines several photos together to create one.  Mmmm.... I can see how my afternoon is going to go now!

(P.S.  This will be one blog post that I hope The Professor doesn't read!)

I definitely need some blinders!

Unlike me, go out and do something fun today, dear friends!  (But actually, I am having fun!)