Before & After Photo Manipulation

My new hobby is photo shooting and manipulation. My daughter and I enjoyed taking photos this past summer and using Photoshop Elements for enhancing them. Many of the photos I've included in this post were uploaded to Capture Minnesota. I was not able to upload the photo of my grandson at the lake because it was taken in South Dakota. However, it was such a drastic change that I decided to add it here.

Today I finished manipulating two photos into one final print. The first photo is of my husband and me placing our hands in the form of a heart. The second is a photo of our four children taken a few years ago that I clipped around, cut and pasted onto the first, for what I call Heart of Arms Family photo.

Most of the photos were taken with a Canon CoolPix L120. I recently purchased a Canon EOS 60D camera so that my daughter was able to take the older one off to college where she hopes to start a photography club.

So here are several photos before and after photo manipulation, with the before photos being put before the after photos. How appropriate, right? Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Heart of Arms Family.  This is the one I wrote about above where I took two photos and put them together. I had to enlarge the photo of me and my husband so that when I pasted the first one onto the layer the kids fit within our arms.

Bale Chute.  Because I wanted the focus point to be Keisha holding up the bale chute so it wouldn't be caught under the hayrack, I left the color over that area and made the rest of the photo black and white..

Bale Elevator.  This one is more about the angle of the photo to give it a different point of view.

In Memorium.  At my daughter's suggestion, this one was taken low to the ground, shooting upward. Isn't she clever? I cropped this one to frame the flags, and even straightened it up a bit. I also enhanced the colors. The effect is wonderful!

Maxton's Rocky Beach.  As you can tell on this one, I removed the legs. In order to do a quick work of it, I darkened the edges to camouflage my work.

Mesmerized.  My daughter felt this photo was absolutely ridiculous looking, but I loved her expression and wasn't quite sure how to use the photo at first. I decided to blacken everything out around her face and as I did it seemed that her expression changed along with the rest of the photo changes.

New Beginnings.  This is a beautiful wild rose bud. I simply cropped it to bring it in closer and used the contrast and brightness to lighten it up.

Pink Bully.  Another beautiful flower from a bull thistle.

Stack 'Em Up.  Once again, the focus was to be on Keisha; therefore, I cropped it and worked on the color.

Wild Roses.  More of the same photo manipulations. Simply beautiful.

Capture Minnesota.  Except for Maxton's Rocky Beach, all of these photos were taken in Minnesota and uploaded onto Capture Minnesota. View my dashboard here for more fun photos.

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