Dark Horse, Raven and Nightmare in the Haunted Forest

I finally got around into editing these photos of Raven Queen and Nightmare (Headmistress

Bloodgood's horse) in the haunted forest and since I did put a little more work than usual into

these I decided I would share a before and after here on our blog :-)

Dark Horse on Flickr:

And here's the before:

 A little close-up pict :-)

Before editing:

I just adjusted the lights and darks playing with contrast and then I played with the hues

so the colours would appear more vibrant and warm (look at those browns!).

I think that somehow I re-created the haunted forest scene in Disney's Snow White 

(when I was a child I used to think that scene was so creepy and scary but cool too!):

Original Disney concept art by Gustaf Tenggren.

The dress is from one of our BeGoths dolls, Storm:

 Let's give Nightmare some love with our pictures of her!

A lot of collectors seem not to be fans of Headmistress' horse :-/

they say she's bulky and that it's a shame she's not articulated (unlike Avea Trotter).

I personally think Nightmare's colours are gorgeous and she looks lovely in photos:

Headless Headmistress Bloodgood and Nightmare <3

Here's our Sleepy Hollow themed picture of them (Bloodgood is the daughter

of the main character, The Headless Horseman, in the classic American novel).

Hmmm I think I might have been inspired by Disney again LOL

Screenshot of Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949)

But I love Tim Burton's adaptation more :-)

Last but not least I'll share a snapshot of the first photo's Adjustment/Layers
for those who could be interested:

(You can skip reading this part unless you're into Photoshop).

Signature is turned off on this one since I don't put it for Flickr.

I used a Vignette effect to darken the corners of the photo so the forest looks more scary and mysterious.

 The Curves adjustment layer was used to adjust the colours.

Here there are 2 Levels adjustment layers, one was used to brighten the photo and the other to darken

the forest.

With Hue/Saturation I made the colours more vibrant.

I brightened the eyes on the Eyes layer and I also fixed some hair flyaways and stuff.

Background is the original photo.

...
Hope you enjoyed this post ^__^

Love <3
Mariko.

Photo Editing, Recreating the 300 look!

My sister had a really good idea to celebrate her 300 followers on instagram, a 300 themed picture!

300 is a 2006 film directed by Zack Snyder that is actually based on a comic by Frank Miller (he's
responsible for Sin City too).
A sequel to this movie, Rise of an Empire, came out a few months ago but I haven't seen it yet :-P

Now, onto the picture.

First, let's take a look at the before and after:

The change is pretty dramatic :-)

Sorry about the watermark but it's cute, right? On a next post I'll show you how to

create your own signature so you can add them to your photos.

Before we go into details I just want to say that my sister did a beautiful job on sewing Viperine's dress.

In case you haven't noticed yet, it's based on what Queen Gorgo wears in the film:

Before doing anything to my photo I saved some stills from the film to keep as reference and
also to have as inspiration, example:

And of course, a poster of the film too:

I Googled and searched a PNG or PSD image of the 300 text

(feel free to save this pict for your project):

Why PNG or PSD? Because these type of pictures usually, if you're lucky, will have their
background blank (removed) so you can put them directly onto your picture without needing to
cut them out yourself (someone else did the job for you and saved you some time yay!).

I also found this video that gave me some ideas on how to do things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo6Mm1FFnzA

Now here's a you a caption of my Photoshop layers:

As you can see I did borrow some tips and tricks from the video tutorial. I'm going to explain what these layers are for, from the bottom (first layer) to the top (last layer).

The 1st layer is the Background layer, it's the original photo, nothing altered.

The 2nd layer is Background Copy and it's exactly that, or it was until I made my changes by
using Content Aware and Clone Stamping to fix distracting things like hair flyaways and
glares in the eyes. I also made made the whites of her eyes a little brighter with the Dodge Tool
so they really POP!
Notice I Masked this layer to bring back some parts of the original Background layer. If you
don't know about Masking, well, you really should! It will save you in a lot of situations!!! I
recommend this video to learn more about Masks (and it's under 4 minutes long!) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztywetz3DO4

The 3rd layer is a Levels adjustment layer and what I did with this one is just some contrasting
by simply sliding the first arrow to the right. Again, I did some Masking here because I didn't
like it how some parts of the photo looked with too much contrast.

The 4th adjustment layer is Hue/Saturation. The photo was too colourful for our 300 look so I
lowered the saturation to -65. But of course, I didn't want Viperine to be de-saturated, only the
background! So I brought back her colour by painting the Mask (again LOL).

5th adjustment layer is for Color Balance. I pumped up the reds, decreased the greens and
added a little bit of blues. Again, I didn't want this to affect Viperine so yeah, I Masked again by
painting her silhouette black (black conceals, white reveals!).

Adjustment layer number 6 is a Gradient Map! For this layer I actually followed the
instructions of the How to: 300 Look video tutorial that I linked above. Basically you just add
the layer and then you choose a gradient, in this case I chose Gold 1.

The 7th adjustment layer is Photo Filter. I did this one because it was instructed in the how to
video too and I thought it looked good so I went ahead and chose a custom orangey brown
colour and completed the look (it also gave Viperine a nice Greek Goddess tan LOL).

Number 8, Sunbeam, is just a layer that has been painted with a spot of white on the top left part.
By doing this I got a nice little lightbeam on my photo.

Layer 9 is the 300 text (the PNG file that I showed you previously). I clipped 2 layers on it
(clipping means these two layers only affect the image it's been clipped on) so I could turn it
from bloody red to a cute pink that I color eyedropped from Viperine's snakes (I got the perfect
matching colour that way!). Also notice the FX, Effects, Drop Shadow. Yes I put a little shadow
under the text, just like on the poster. Click with the left button of your mouse on the layer you
want to drop shadow onto and then click on Blending Options (it's first on the top!). There
you'll find shadows and other cool things ;-) You can also use Blending Options on a Text Layer.

Sounds like I did a lot! But work flies when you're having fun editing and of course here the
work was extra compared to a normal photo since we're trying to copy a surreal look from an
artistic looking film.

If you want to try this 300 look I can assure you that you will already get a pretty good effect by
doing a simple version of what I did.

The picture on our instagram:

On my next post I'll show you some close-up picts of Viperine's with her Greek Dress ^__^
(I'm not sure if I'll edit those picts with a 300 effect yet, will see...).

Love <3
Mariko.