About Me and Getting Back to Graphics

I've been in a low place for some time and unable to make myself do many of the things that I enjoy, which only serves to contribute to the problem. It is a diagnosed condition and has a name. It's called dysthymia, which is simply a mild, long lasting form of depression. Sometimes I can get the best of it, but often as not, it gets the best of me. Most of this past year has been a win for dysthymia. I hate it. I seldom use medication, but have seriously considered it this time around. I think I may be on the verge of overcoming it so I am going to hold off for a while to see what happens. I wish I had not let it get this far along and have made a promise to myself that I won't let it go this long again without getting a script for a mild anti-depressant.

My point here is that when I start getting more active with the things I enjoy, I know that I am on the mend. I've done a few things in my favorite graphics program recently and thought I would post one of my little projects here. Since I've also let my interest in photography drift, I went back to my interview with Sarah stash of photos to do a little project that I came up with from viewing the works of others.

Here is the SOOC photo that I started with. It is okay, but nothing earth shattering beyond the fact that any picture of Sarah is terrific in her Mimi's opinion.



I cropped out the portion of the photo that I wanted to display and used Paint Shop's internal one step photo fix on the new image. Instant improvement without having to go through a lot of individual steps to get pretty much the same results. After that, I added a contrast adjustment layer to boost the contrast and merged down. I then used the dodge tool to brighten the whites of her eyes (on a duplicate layer) then flattened the image and burned the outside edges with the burn tool to add interest to the photo. The last step, before saving the cropped image, was to sharpen the image with the unsharp mask. I did resize both versions before uploading to keep the size and load time down. Here's the finished product.



I think this version really pops and lets others see the bright and beautiful Sarah that I see in person. My camera and my photo skills just can't seem to do that without help. The adjustments were minor with dramatic results in my opinion. I hope you like it!

My granddaughter's birth has made me want to create things she will love. ~Billy Crystal

The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy. ~Sam Levenson