‘Before’ and ‘After’

Our niece is staying with us for a few days now and again next month as the residence halls on campus are closed and her travel plans during the holidays make it silly for her to go home to Michigan and come back. We're happy to have her.

Today she got her hair cut and Uncle Thom prevailed on her for “Before” and “After” shots. If you're wondering if she had “enough” cut … she did! http://www.locksoflove.org/

In each image I “selected” her face, hair and scarf, inverted the selection and gray-scaled her coat and the background. Then I removed triangle-shaped regions from each image, pasted one image into the other (which I'd made larger, of course) and made the upper layer transparent to reveal the lower layer underneath. How much time did this take? Probably too much! Learning to be more proficient and efficient with Photoshop is on my retirement to-do list! (Also on that list, besides travel, is to digitize my slides and negatives … if I should live that long!)

I colored the upper-right block to match the background for posts in 365, but I cannot — for the life of me! — blend or gradient the lower-left block to the drop shadow that 365 puts on the bottom edge of the posted image. I uploaded-and-deleted this image so many times, but I have to cry “Uncle!” at this point.

Just so everyone knows! *Not* posted today:
» a coffee "cherry" from one of the plants at the greenhouse
» an "Illicium parviflorum" fruit without its seeds (think "star anise")
» a Pelargonium (geranium) leaf

1 year ago (“Such long shadows … before 3 p.m.”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2013-12-18
2 years ago (“Comfort & Joy”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2012-12-18
3 years ago (“Blue sky. Calm lake. And 21-feet of boat.”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2011-12-18

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[Sheralee S]

That's a lot of hair she had cut off! Both are beautiful portraits Thom.

[Danette Thompson]

She looks completely different. When you had posted another version, I looked quickly and thought maybe the two people were related! Anyway, good job with the editing.