Lee-Anne had the great idea of asking me how I photograph my LO’s so I can blog, FB and submit them.

I use a board that’s larger than 12x12. Mine’s plywood. I’ve spray painted one side black, the other white. I use this board for every LO that I photograph to give the LO a strong contrasting background so I can delete that white or black in Photoshop. I end up with a very clean and straight LO to post or submit when I’m done.

I’ll walk you thru it step by step. I use Photoshop CS5. I hope that Photoshop Elements has the same ‘Perspective’ tick box associated with the crop tool. (Don’t worry I explain that in a tick)

1. Lay your board in a well lit area but not in direct sunlight. I tend to go outside on the non breezy side of my home, lay the board down on the edge of the shadow so that it is near direct light. Use the side of the board that contrasts the most to the edge of your LO.

2. Stand directly over the board and hold the camera as level as possible to you don’t tilt it otherwise your LO will look skewed. Watch for shadows cast by you, or by neighbouring objects near you. Or stand with your side to a window if you are inside. You wont cast a shadow over your work if you stand to one side of it.

3. Shoot the LO with f5.6 or higher if you can. This will get most of it in focus. Don’t use flash that is directed at your LO as you’ll see it in the reflection on your photos on your work. Bounce it from the ceiling or don’t use it at all. Bump up your ISO to get the light you need. Try to keep the shutter about or above 1/100 seconds to avoid camera shake.

4. Take a series of shots until you’re happy.




5. Load it on to your computer where you can find it. Then load that file into Photoshop.

6. If you know about levels and curves (don’t worry if you don’t) use auto for the adjustments.

7. Flatten the layers –right click on the levels or curves layer-scroll down the popup menu-flatten image.

8. Crop tool. Make sure you have cleared any previous set measurements. Crop so that there is still a little bit of the board showing.

9. PERSPECTIVE. Up near the top of the screen by the opacity percentage is a little tick box for Perspective. Tick it. This now gives you the ability to move each corner of the cropped image independently from the others. Grab one corner and pull it in so that it marries up with your LO. Do the same for each corner. Scroll in on your LO for finer detail in placing those corner marks. ENTER.

10. this crops off all the background and straightens up your LO.

11. right click on the layer-scroll down the popup menu-flatten image.

12. DONE. save as a JPG file.





If you happen to have an element that travels off the edge of the page, we can work with that too. Do all of the above including no 9.

1. Instead of dragging the corners of the crop into the corners of the LO, drag the crop marks until it reaches the edge of the element. Bring in the other crop marks to the corners of the LO.

2. Click on the Magic Eraser Tool from the tool bar on the left hand side of the screen. (Right click the little black corner on the eraser to find the magic eraser tool.) up on the top of the screen is a box showing a number for Tolerance. Default is 32. Bump it up to 50. Move the eraser curser over the image that has the board showing around the element that has travelled off the page. Click on the board. You should be left with a grey and white checkerboard and the LO.

3. Right click on the layer-scroll down the popup menu-flatten image. This turns the transparent page to white. This is the same white as on blogs default colour and for default email backgrounds.

4. Cast your eye around for any bits left behind and erase. When happy, flatten again.

5. Save as JPG file


go herefor a short video demo on using the perspective tool. sourced from Adobe

Don't sweat on the details. after a couple of goes it should take no longer than a minute to do all of this.

easy peasy.

LO lifted from the amazing Julie Winks ‘there is no greater gift than today’ LO.

I am seriously loving these tips Tiff - you are a gem for sharing your fantastic knowledge with us - thankyou

Now i am soooo going to have to get myself a piece of plyboard and invest in photoshop.....
Wonder if hubby will let me go shopping tomorrow on my day off, i just wont mention the word scrapping, when i say scrap shopping he tends to get a little woozy hehehehe

I'm going to have to give these tips a try out.

I'm printing this out toooo!!

I need to have it sitting next to me so i can go through it bit by bit!!!

Thanks Tiff!

Thank you so much for these tips.

you are more than welcome girls!!!

I dont have Photoshop or Elements on this computer. That will have to wait for a bit but I will sure save this for when I can get it. Sounds great, thank you.

You really don't need Photoshop (as much as the above tips are awesome ) - if you get a board like Tiff has described and use something like Picasa to crop (which is a free editing program), you will still get great results. Maybe not as super but still really good.

I use a white piece of card (which is getting a bit dodgy now) and pretty much do the same as Tiff when I am photographing and am happy with the results so will stick with my freebie program at the moment. As much as I would love Photoshop, it just isn't in the budget at the moment so I just make do with what I have

Definitely going to update the card to a painted board though - fantastic idea!!

scrappinallie is absolutley correct. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong Scrappinallie) that Picasa has an auto crop and straighten function somewhere. This would make things fairly easy.

I'm not Picassa literate but I'm fairly certain that its straight forward to install and use.

Praps someone who uses it alot can type up a quick dot point list of how to do in Picasa??

http://picasa.google.com/

30 day free trail of Photoshop Elements 9. Just about everything you want to do you can do with this one.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_elements&loc=en_us

30 day free trial of Photoshop CS 5 Extended (this is the bells and whistles version). Lots of creatvie scope and extra functions (photomerge and HDR) that PSE does not have.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=product_notify&promoid=EBYEU

I have just bought PSE9 and the book All-In-One for dummies. So I am hoping in time I will be able to understand something...I am so Technologically challenged

I want to upgrade and love to try the PS programs suggested... BUT...
I've got PS elements 5.0 and thats already on my computer ....soooooooooo what happens when you download one of these others??
Does it counter outs my elements program?? Hmmm....
I'm scared cos if somethings going to cock up.... it will be to me!!!
Then i have NO idea what to do about it!


I do totally love my PS programs.... would not ever be without it regardless of the cost - its a fabulous investment. I've had my PS elements 5.0 for about 6 years now...so break that down in what it cost over the years......it works out to be not much!

I do already use a white and a black board for my shots... and I do want to have the best possible editing program to be really happy with it.

I've used the freebies in the past, and they are okay - but wasnt totally happy with the result.