The other day, MargeKatherine played around with some Photoshop Filters on her blog, Inside Out Cafe.  I left her comment encouraging her to try Topaz Labs plug-in filters and she said –

. . . get in there and play around and see what fun images you can create! And then show me!!

So I did!

Here’s the original photo:

It’s not bad, but before I started playing, I did some minor cloning, color correction, keystone correction (i.e., where the picture skews because of the perspective), and enhanced the detail.  Then I cropped it to get rid of some rust and crummy looking stuff.  This is how it looked before I started playing:

Here’s vintage grunge.  Not bad, eh?

This one is sunset.  What a beautiful warm glow it gives the bricks!

And this is from the black & white module.  It’s called Opalotype and I used the “milk effect”.  I did do some playing around as I didn’t like the default settings (called presets).

And lastly, since I was playing(!), here is an effect called solarized dreams.  I like how the windows glow in it and was pleased with the overall look.

I played with one other photo as well.  Here’s the original.  It’s very pretty “as is”, but I wanted to de-emphasis the background more, especially the bright pink splotches.

I converted it to black & white, with some color restored and a few other adjustments.  It looks very delicate.

Topaz Labs filters are available at www.topazlabs.com.  If you take one of their webinars, a coupon is often available for purchasing the filters or the full suite.  The webinars are also available on YouTube about a week later.

Have you been over to A Daily Life?  Recent posts include Making Time To Write and Prompts to Share Your World.

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