Guest Blog: Sheryl Kasper, Photo Fixing

Today’s guest blog is from Sheryl Kasper, who’s sharing her technique for turning a not-so-great flower photograph into a beautiful, marketable shot by using digital manipulation techniques in Photoshop. This technique will work for virtually any object, by the way. Thanks, Sher!

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Digital Magic:
How to Make the “Ho Hum” Disappear
From Your Photographs 

Do you ever find you have a nice image, but there are a lot of distracting elements in the background?  I have!

When I started getting into photography, I took a lot of photographs of flowers out in the garden.  I found a lot of my flower images taken in the garden had so many distracting elements in the background.  Though my subject flower was very pretty, I was always disappointed by the background.

I soon realized my passion for flower photography was better suited in a controlled setting.  By that I mean table top, or still life, photography where I could set up my own background and add my own lighting.  I did not have to contend with weeds, dead flowers or the wind blowing the flower around making the flower difficult to photograph.

So with that said, I have written a Squidoo Lens that may help revamp some of your ho-hum images.  Though I used a flower image as an example, I feel these directions may help with any other type of photograph where the subject is well lit and the background is bad.  It is called, “Turn a Plain Image into a Marketable Design”, and includes Photoshop tutorials on how to:

• Isolate the flower out of the photograph,
• How to add a new background,
• How to add a drop shadow under the flower,
• How to size the flower,
• How to add a colored rectangle design element,
• How to put an outline around the rectangle,
• How to add text.

I made the final design very simple so that it would be easier to teach how to use these Photoshop features.    Thank you and I hope you find it useful.

Turn a Plain Image Into a Marketable Design