I'm having a lot (and I mean a LOT) of trouble coming up with a photostory, so here are some photos that I could maybe use but probably almost definitely not. When I settle on an idea, I really want to go and take the pictures specifically for the project. Here are some brainstormed ideas...

Week 10! This has gone so fast! This week's edits were fairly simple but really fun, so here we are:

I used clone to remove this pool noodle, which apparently works about the same as Heal does, so it was quick and easy to figure out.

Then here I added text to this picture and played around with text settings:

Finally, I used Paint to make this fun little firefly, just playing around with the Paint options.  I then added a Canvas Effect to make it more silly and fun:

Hi everybody! Here's my work for week nine! I had a really fun time doing an amateurish photo shoot with a friend of mine (who you may recognize from my colors photo last week) at Hamilton Falls, so I used those for my assignment.


In this first photo, I used the color skills learned last week to recolor her bathing suit and the water, and selection and contrast to add a very dream-like quality to the water (or that was what we were going for.) I used dodge and burn with very low opacity to lighten shadows that fell on her face and darken some spots on the rocks.

In this photo, I first used Unsharp Mask (which is my best friend. I use it to some degree on most of my edited photos.) I then used Dilate (which I love, but it took me forever to find once I'd done it the first time.) Finally a few Heal touch-ups and selective darkening with the Burn tool, and viola-finished product:

Finally, here I once again sharpened the photo, using Sharpen this time. Then I used Sparkle, which is pretty neat. I added a Fuzzy Border, and topped it off with a Softglow. I really liked the filters I used on all of these pictures.

So I played around a lot with this first image as a whole:

I used lots of tools, especially color balance and brighten/contrast. I also played around quite a bit with tinting, but didn't leave it in the final image. I was going for a natural, sunny sort of picture, but I think it ended up looking a tiny bit surreal. I did end up liking it, though. 

Then in this image, though, I used a lot of selection tools to work in separate areas after brightening the whole photo and adding contrast:

I feel like I really got the hang of the color tools working with this picture. I made Kaleigh's hair more red, I selectively added contrast to her skin to make her freckles really pop and did a ton of little color touch-ups. I LOVE the way it turned out. 

Okay, so, I don't know about anyone else, but this week's assignment was a struggle for me.  I started at two and have just now, three hours later, finished editing two photos.  The layers just throw me off, and I seem to always end up moving or deleting or selecting the wrong layer.  Luckily for me, GIMP lets me keep a dialogue box open of my undo history.  I actually like how the first picture turned out, but not so much the second one.  (It feels extremely poorly done and cheesy.  Ah, well.  Learning is a process.)

(Cropped, then everywhere except the people was selected and blurred. )

(A little of everything went in to this.  Rotating, re-sizing, cropping, multiple layers, selecting, deleting... and still ended looking weird.  Oh, well.)

It's been awfully rainy, and searching for four landscapes good enough to be considered my favorites was a struggle.  After traipsing around all over the place looking for things to take pictures of (shout out to my long-suffering best friend who had to deal with me shouting 'stop the car!' and running back to get a pretty picture or two) I think I did, eventually, manage to find some I liked.  However, I learned that it's hard to go looking for the perfect landscape, so to appreciate the times it finds you.