Do you want to know a secret?

a post full of not very well kept secrets.

Secret 1

I am quite old now! And that means photos of when I was younger have been years in sticky photo albums and are really in pretty poor condition. They are faded and the colours all gone haywire.

 Secret 2

I cheat when I scrap old pictures to make them look better.

 

 
I wanted to scrap these two pictures for part of my 5210 project (for details on 5210 project which is a free year long class check here) but they were not in great condition. I prised them out of the sticky album and scanned them but the colours were dreadful on the one of me on my own. (Oh and there is Secret 3 – I had a podgy tummy which I hid even then!)

I tried altering the colours in Photoshop but to make me look a normal tanned colour rather than looking like had serious jaundice (I really am always very tanned) it made the background go completely weird with the sea and sky developing a pink hue that was just plain odd.

As the main focus of the picture was to be me, it seemed sensible to alter the picture in photoshop by making me the right colour and then the background black and white.  The instructions here are for PSE 5 but I am sure it is similar in other versions and programmes and there are such good tutorials on the internet anyway (far better than this)

This is really simple to do by creating an adjustment layer.

First get the part of the picture that you want in colour adjusted to be the colour you want it.

 

 

Then select adjustment layer by clicking on the button (looks like a circle half black and half white)

Working on the adjustment layer only reduce the saturation down to zero so it all looks black and white.

 

Make sure the brush colours are the default of black and white (D ensures this and x toggles between the black and white)

 

Select the eraser tool and white and erase the black and white from the area you want to be coloured. So in this case I erased all over myself revealing the colour underneath. I tend to use a large brush size for most of it and reduce to a smaller size to do the edges and small details. If you accidentally erase something you didn’t mean to simple change to the black and go over it again and voila – black and white again.

 

Once you are happy with the finished picture crop and save as a JPEG which will merge the layers. Really simple and very effective for old ruined pictures as well as creating cool effects for other things.

 Secret 4 – cheat and make them look like old polaroids by adding a frame and text onto it. (I used to love old polaroids)

 Finally, make the page a real secret .Secret 5 – hide the journaling under the pictures by creating lift up flaps

 

  

Comments

[claireliz]

great photos & memories, love the LO
C
xx

[Eleanor]

Why have I never done this, it's much simpler than I thought. I have too many photos with rubbish around in the background, but a great subject to scrap in the foreground.
Off to practise. Glad you didn't keep this secret to yourself!
xx

[Lynne V]

Thanks for the tips.

[Carmen]

I really need to get Photoshop! This was a great tutorial - love the page as well :D