Howard Millard

Sometimes all it takes to lift your photo from the ordinary to the extraordinary
is a striking edge or border. Would a soft-edged vignette or a unique pattern
border take your image to the next level of dramatic impact? While there are
myriad software programs and plug-ins designed to add special effect edges,
borders and frames, you probably already have quite an array of possibilities
built into your current image-editing software. To get you started, here are
some effects that I created with Adobe Photoshop. You can use Elements for these,
as well. Earlier versions of these as well as other image-editing programs offer
many of the same effects. Now let's give some photos a new leading edge...

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Could your portraits be enhanced
by the mysterious, otherworldly glow of a black and white infrared (IR) effect?
In the past, pre-digital darkroom, the only way you could get the IR look was
shooting special IR film, quite a challenge to expose, process, and print correctly.
Working digitally you can avoid many of the pitfalls and gain much more control
in the bargain. Here's how to emulate that exotic infrared look digitally:




You can start with a scan of any color slide, print, or negative you've
shot with your film camera or, even easier, with a color file from your digital
camera. If you're starting with a print, negative, or slide, scan it in
RGB color mode. Once you've got the digital file, open it in Adobe Photoshop
CS (or some earlier versions) to follow the steps outlined here. You can also
achieve the effect with Adobe Elements 2 or other advanced image-editing programs,
but the names of some tools or dialog boxes may be slightly different. Always
work on a copy to preserve your original scan. In fact, with this technique,
it is a good idea to make two or three copies in order to try different settings
in search of the effect you like best. Just follow these steps and you'll
be on your way to easy IR.

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