Friday Thoughts and Sky Photos

It's been cold, snowy, rainy, and pretty depressing around here this past month.  I thought it was time to drag out a photo of happier days.  This was taken in mid-August at one of my favorite places close to home.

In a recent Wordless Wednesday post I submitted a "solarized" photo.  Several people thought that it was pretty cool and a couple of you wondered how it was done.  I have posted a solarized photo as my blog banner photo this week as well. The truth is, it's extremely simple.  Here is how it works.
First of all, I am using Photoshop Elements 7.  It will do virtually anything that I need done without the expense of the full version of Photoshop, in fact,  it's about $500.00 cheaper.  I don't know if other photo editing programs have this solarizing feature or not, but it is built into PSE.

Now, pick a photo that you want to use this technique on.  I will use the one from my blog header.  It is a very brightly colored image to start with, so it will provide lots of fun colors when finished. This sea dragon can be found in the lagoon at Downtown Disney in Orlando, FL.  He's actually made out of Lego's!
Next I cropped him into a square in order to reduce the size of the image file.  Now comes the magic.
Click on the "Enhance" tab and go to "Adjust Color".  In that pull down menu, click on "Adjust Color Curves".  The photo will be displayed with several options.  The last option is solarize.  Click on it and here is what will happen.

Pretty cool, huh!  This is all there is to solarizing a photo.  Now, if you don't like these colors, you can take this another step further.  Click on Enhance/Adjust Color and go to "Hue and Saturation".  By sliding those bars to the left or right, you will change the photo dramatically.  Here is what happens when you set the Hue at +25 and the Saturation at -25.

Here is what happens when you set the Hue at -100 and the Saturation at +50.

I think that the settings for my banner photo were Hue -180 and Saturation +100.  Here is one last example.  As you can see, the possibilities are endless.  Once again, I will emphasize, If I can do this, anyone can do this.

So much for "Fun With PhotoShop Elements", it's time to wrap this up and play the inspirational song for this week. Unless the Lord returns first, there will come a day when each of us will leave this world and step into eternity.  For those who have heard the call of God, repented of their sin, sought the forgiveness of the Father, and invited Christ into their life, they will enter into a place prepared just for them.  When our work in done here, we will be able to "Go Rest High On That Mountain."  Enjoy.