Special Affects and other fun things

Last week I put up a photo on the blog banner that I had played with in a photo edit program. Mostly I just wanted to see how it did in the blog format and I thought it looked great. I received a couple comments asking how I had done it – and this blog is to tell you how.

I know everyone in the world that likes to take photos has Photoshop or other less well known programs to play with or to edit out the major mistakes made when out in the world taking quick shots.

But for me this program, costing US$699 (in Brasil is R$900), is too rich just to being playing around. I went on line and searched (not wanting a free program or to hock my first granddaughter to buy it.) and found one for US$170.00 called ADCsee Pro 3.

The only thing that I haven’t liked is that ADC doesn’t have watercolor affects which I used often when I first started using a digital camera. That edit program was an old Microsoft XP add-on photo editor – and was GREAT – FOR free!

When I take a photo of flowers, for example, the best is when I just like the photo as it is, but if the color is good but maybe there is blurring in the wrong place – or like the one above – the flower shows flaws that I don’t notice with my very bad eyesight, then I like to play with an editor. Here are a few examples…

oil paint  -      Granite -

Old                   Sepia -

  Sheet metal -   Colored edges - 

and finally -  

  Stained Glass