Griffith + a Mini Photoshop Tutorial

Rauly, Nate and I went to the Griffith Observatory today-- one of the highlights: stopping at a random Indian food place in LA for lunch! We had no idea what we were eating, but it was pretty good. Well, we probably won't go back ever again, but it was fun in the moment.

Here's some shots from the Observatory. I photoshopped these things to death, and thought I'd show you my process. I usually don't do crazy color things with my images, but felt like going wild with these ones since they were classic touristy i'm at a musem with my friends pictures. Plus- what better way to NOT do homework?

Here's what I did in Photoshop. (Each of these are a new layer)
- My Color Balance numbers were at -57, -68, and -100. I duplicated this layer so that it made them even more yellow-green
- I made the image black and white, and took the opacity down to 26%
- I made about 4 different S curves to make the images more contrasty, and lightened them using levels.
- I made a vignette around the edge. I have Kevin Kubota's Action Pack 1, and it comes in there.
Regarding the size, I decided to crop them like this because each of the images had dead space at either the top or the bottom. Cropping them to a panoramic size helped bring more focus to the subject of each photo.
And finally, sharpened the important parts of each image.
The end result looks like kind of a mix between a cross-processed image and a holga-- and all they needed was a little love.

Without further to do, the first original:

and then...WOW!


from blah

to ZING


at first I looked like an eclipsed sun

and now i dont!


Oh, our field trip was cancelled for yesterday. No night photos...

Also-- thanks to everyone who has been commenting-- if you have thoughts while you're reading entries, write me a small note. It will most likely make my day. :)

Nathan and Rauly-- a fun multicultural day learning about how we're...stardust.