Melissa and I took the dogs to the Maryville Greenbelt Sunday. They had a great time. Shorty likes the ducks, and Sparky likes the squirrels.
While we were there I snapped a few pictures with the cell phone camera. (I just shipped my regular digicam to the factory for repair.) This shot turned out the best of a bad lot. It has really soft focus, which is a shame because it’s a nice composition: a creek running diagonally across the foreground, trees in winter, and the county court house set against a blue sky with clouds. (Click on the thumbnail to bask in its 640 x 480 glory.)
Rather than tossing it, I deciced to use Photoshop filters to create something that would be a keeper.
Brush Strokes/Crosshatch filter:
Pixelate/Facet filter:
Artistic/Poster Edges filter (my favorite):
Artistic/Plastic Wrap filter:
Distort/Polar Coordinates filter:
I think the experiment was a success. A couple of these pictures are keepers. What’s amazing to me is that I can use a cheap, low-res camera and a little photo manipulation and create something that’s visually interesting. With a high-res camera the photo-realistic images looked so good that I never bothered to use any effects. When I get my regular camera back I’m going to experiment with high-res pictures and Photoshop filters to see what’s possible.
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I liked the fade facet one best.
You know, it’s interesting. I was kicking around the idea of printing up one of these as an 8×10, so I tried enlarging them in software.
These are 640×480 pixel cell phone pix, so there aren’t many pixels there to enlarge. When enlarged the facet filter version looks the least pixelated and “computer-ey” of the bunch.