Photoshop

My sister asked me about my new banner, so I thought I would post instructions on how I did it. We were at her house yesterday afternoon, but she now has something more fun than Photoshop: Super Mario Brothers on Wii. :)

I have Photoshop Elements 3.0, so some things may be a little different in newer versions. I'm not an expert, so there may be a better or easier way of doing these things. I started with this picture I took last week and cropped down to the size I wanted.

I wanted to leave some of the rosiness in Rebecca's cheeks before I did any other editing. So I used the lasso tool to select her cheeks, and feathered it at 15 pixels. Then select inverse, go to Select on the menu and click on Inverse.

I wanted to make the colors look kind of faded. To do that, duplicate the layer. Go to Layers on the menu bar, duplicate layer. Then change the image to black & white. Go to Enhance on the menu bar, adjust color, and remove color. Your image should now be all black and white, except on mine, Rebecca's cheeks are still pink. Then change the transparency, on mine it's on the right side. Choose visibility from the drop down box, then click on the gray box that says 'Ghosted'. I think mine looks like I used old film or something, so I'll do the same thing again. I want it to look a little more faded. So flatten the image by going to Layer on the menu bar, then Flatten image. If you're happy with your image, move on. Or do the same thing again, remove color and change the visibilty to Ghosted, and flatten image.

Next I added a vignette effect, or darkened the outer edges of the picture. Using the eliptical marquee tool, make an oval of the size you would like. It doesn't matter where it is right now, as long as it's the right size. Next you can adjust where it is centered. Then right click and select inverse, and right click again and choose Feather. I think I made this one 150.

So next, adjust the levels to make everything outside the oval darker. On my version, I go to Enhance, Adjust lighting, Levels. I'm going to put this one around 90. If you have preview selected, you can see the changes as you move the arrow on the right of the bar. Once that is done flatten the image again.

Next I added a hard light effect. First add a duplicate layer then from the Layers menu, choose Hard Light. Change the Opacity to the level you like. I usually put mine between 25 and 40%. For this one, I'll make it 25%.

Almost done! Last I added the text for my blog, chose the font I wanted (CK twilight), and centered the text. Flatten the image again, and you're done! :)