JFlah's Blunders

Each year I have the privilege of making HD slides out of photos that parents send in for the Parent/Child dedication. I extended a lot of backgrounds this year but this one was one of the most challenging. Thankfully, this year, I didn't have to add any elbows or shoulders.   This is the original   And here's the finished slide - painted in the bench end and some bushes/grass Probably should have done something about the overexposure on her skin - it was a bright day but it turned out cute.

It's May. That means I've been buried under photographs for weeks - first for High School Graduate Recognition and now for Parent/Child Dedication. I typically enjoy "fixing" them and naturally, some prove more of a challenge than others. Talk about FUN! Here's one example from this week that needed more than the cursory changes to fit our SD format. Original: Edited (see final above):

It's funny how people think differently about things - here are basic ideas I offered for this week's sermon title slide: And here's what Pastor countered with from a google image search: I loved the idea of the hand reaching out from the pile of wadded papers with a help sign - and he wasn't opposed to it, so I was off. This is the first time I've been bold enough to ask for someone to help me with source pictures. Pastor did a great job and sent me come pictures but they weren't quite what I wanted so I took a few too. Pastor and my boss were hand models - used the sleeve from pastor's pics and the hand from my boss's pics, replaced the paper with a picture I took of some crumpled paper, took pics of wadded up paper, worked on shadows and balances and other such and ended up with this:   That awesome "help" font is Befn - don't remember now where I got it - might've been one of those stellar Mon...

Last week I spent an afternoon working on some upcoming designs. The image Pastor sent to me is from here . Someone used it for a nice looking book cover for a family worship topic. After doing the small format designs, I realized that there was no way that tiny image was going to work for the 20x30 poster we need in the ministry center, so I started pulling pieces to put together something that would work in the larger print format. Here's the original that Pastor sent to me - nice huh? It looked blown out but after some quick level adjustments I had a base to work with. This is the final edited version for the HD Slides and another for the 20x30 poster:   Probably could use some more shadow for the hymnal that goes onto the Bible, but I think it's effective enough to pass muster. Wood grain texture that I tiled and color corrected for the replaced table top is here and then the great scratches for the overlay for a more realistic table is here . Here '...

Last week I got to do a fun collage for the sermon title imagery. Title was "You Can Be Right and Still Be Wrong" - message was from 1 Corinthians 8 . Here's the final: Banana image borrowed from here . Foot/leg from here . Font: Headline Crack Background is a combination of two images - a concrete wall background and a wood background with some textured layers over the top and some perspective wizardry. The bit that was the most challenging was making the banana look like it was in the scene. As you can see the source image is on a white background and it was lit well. I had to make it look like it fit into the scene I'd created and make sure the shadows were enough to make it look realistic. That was the most fun I've had designing something for work in a while.

Sermon title: How's Your Image? Reference text: Genesis 1:26  Additional Direction: Carnival Mirror, Reflections; our image is distorted because of sin but we're made in God's image and He restores that at salvation. When in the research phase of looking for images that might be useful, all of the carnival mirror images I found were goofy. Could've made my own carnival mirror image and put it into a frame for an interesting effect, but ran across the apple reflection picture and thought it had potential too. Worked that one up but over did it - pastor said both images were broken and Christ restores so we nixed the broken mirror part of the image and voila! Done. This is the first shot at the design. Constructive criticism was that "both images are broken - Christ restores" - so I removed the broken image bits and kept the original reflection for the final version and added some filters. HD Slide version of the final. Source Images with bac...