Texture Tuesday - Warmth

Mouse over photo to see the "before" image

As I've mentioned, probably more than once, I'm taking the Beyond Layers II class.  (You can still register and join the fun!  The class will continue for a year.)  One of the options in Beyond Layers is to participate in Texture Tuesdays.  (Note my cute little link icons on the right side of my blog.)  Kim Klassen, our teacher, provides a texture sheet for us to use, and suggestions on what we might do.  The theme this Tuesday was "warmth."  I decided to use a photo from my traveling days that I took on the small island of Ventotene.  This wee place is in the Mediterranean, and is off the western coast of Italy.  I picked this particular photo because the idea of leaving flowers for Mary spoke of warmth to me. 

In case you wonder about the structure in the photo - there were white-washed walls that lined the roads of the island, usually blocking off the views of the houses, or whatever else might have been behind them!  Often, when I reached a corner in the road, I'd see a small "shrine" like this one built into the wall.  This time I got lucky and saw someone adding flowers to the shrine. 

Original of the slide - you can't see Mary at all.

This photo was probably taken in 1986.  We took slides back then.  Packages of slide film would be mailed to the States for processing, and then sent to my parents' home, as they received all our mail.  We might not actually see the results of our efforts for several months....  So very different with digital film these days!  Anyway, we weren't great photographers, the slides were "preserved" rather carelessly, and decades have passed.  When I scan the slides now, I'm usually disappointed with the quality of what I find - which is one of the reasons why I rely so heavily on Photoshop when processing my slides! 

When I started working on this slide in Photoshop, the first thing I did was use the "equalize" adjustment. 

Thanks to the equalize adjustment, Mary made an appearance!

I then took this image (which you might actually like better than the final image at the top of the page....) and used Gaussian blur, Kim's texture layer (called Sunday), gradients, hue/saturation, and so much fussing around that I lost track after a while.  It does have an aged look to it, which isn't surprising, considering how long it took me to do it.  (joke....)  Anyway, did you notice my other new trick?  If you draw your mouse over the image at the top of the page, you can see the original image hiding underneath it.  I learned this by watching one of Kim's tutorials, and you'll probably see a lot of it in the future, since I'm totally tickled by being able to do this.  :o)

Please note:  If you get notified of my blog via email, I believe you have to come to the actual blog to see the mouse-over effect in action.  A click on JEAN MARY at the bottom of the email will take you right over to the blog.