Photoshop Friday #6

Over the last year and a half, I’ve bought quite a few royalty free images from istock to alter for use in my book and various freelance projects. Istock prices are reasonable, and if you’re a member you also have access to the free image of the week and the dollar bin, which has lots of cool images to download.
I liked this cute istock image of two sisters walking down a road because it reminds me of the close relationship I have with my own sister Pam. Cropping and changing the color allowed me to zero in on the girls and to give the original more emphasis. Plus it’s easy to do.
1. I opened the istock image in Photoshop and then created a new file. (Always leave your original image intact in case you want to work with it again. I learned this the hard way!)
2. Next, I experimented with the Crop tool to give the photo more graphic interest.
3. After cropping, I right clicked on the Background layer in the Layers Palette and chose Duplicate Layer. Then I did this again, so I now had three layers with the same image: Background, Background Copy 2 and Background Copy 3. (Again, it’s always best to work with duplicate layers in case you want to revert to the image you started with).
4. For Background Copy 2—the middle layer—I went to Image>Adjustments>Invert to reverse the colors.
5. For Background Copy 3—the top layer—I chose Color from the drop down menu in the Layers Palette. As soon as I did this the colors on the middle layer jumped out (well, not literally) to make the photo more dramatic.

Even though I’ve done a few gift albums in my time, I’m not really a scrapper. However, I think I’ll try this technique on the next album I do. It might work for a card too.