Having SERIOUS sleep troubles since coming home from Australia. Thursday night I slept 14 hours, but quickly made up for that by not falling asleep at all Friday night, and not for the lack of trying. Slept Saturday night - was up all night Sunday ... again after multiple attempts.
So ... I should be scheduled for a night of sleep now that it is Monday (OK, well, it WAS Monday when I went to bed).
Right?
I have been to bed 3 times (so far) and no go. Each time, I lay there for about an hour, then give up and get up deciding it is better to be productive than just lying there fretting, becoming ever more frustrated and muttering to myself. The first time I got up I cleaned the kitchen and puttered about. The second time I got brave and decided to clean out my closet. Pulled my collection of bags out and promptly decided I had no patience for sorting all of my crap.
Looks good, yes?
The third time I booted up my computer and started some Photoshop CS5 video lessons. I selected 'masking' and 'selections' since Gary has become obsessed with the photo I made of Charlie where she seems to be floating. He told me the other day he would like for me to get it printed on canvas and he would hang it in his office.
OK.
Selections and Masking are techniques used to cut a person, thing, whatever out of a photo - which is what I did with Charlie. There are many ways to do this and some are extremely complicated - but worth it since they do a decent job of selecting strands of hair and clumps of fur. I am still a novice ... but working on it.
Charlie looked cute in the photo, but the background was messy - thus cutting her out and giving her the funky black and white gradient for a background.
So I was practicing while watching the video (yet ANOTHER nice reason to have two monitors ...) and decided to expand my practice to all my kiddos. Mainly I wanted to see if I could make a decent selection on a scanned photo. The quality is pretty much crap - and I wondered what that would do to the selection process. Thus - photos of the kiddos when they were young.
I did play with Charlie a bit more and came up with a few varieties to my original photo:
This one I decreased the saturation so that she didn't have that pesky blueish tint:
Gave her a 'floor' (oops - just noticed she is still blue in this one ...):
Here is one I like - I semi-posterized it (plus a bunch of other stuff ...):
The following photos are from a photo where I am holding both Ryan and Jessie. My eyes are half closed and I have a horrible, goofy, very unflattering grin on my face. Basically, I look drunk or dim witted ... or both - but the kids are adorable. Although the photographer (I am assuming Gary) chopped part of Jessie off - it is one of my all time favorite photos of my kids when they were young. Now it is usable! (And, no, you can't see my part of the photo ...)
Wasn't he the most adorable child ever?
Well, then again - I may be a little biased - but I had / have beautiful children!
Well, it is now exactly 5:01am.
Hmmm.
Yawn ...
4 comments:
That technique is sooo cool. Those pictures of your kids are awesome.
That is neat to learn about, but not so neat that you can't sleep. That is the worst feeling, especially knowing you are going to function like crap the next day. What is it about getting to be my age that makes me wake up at random times? (Besides itty bitty bladder problems - no drinks for me after 8 pm) So now that I can sleep (not pulling all-nighters, staying up late, etc) I can't stay asleep. There is serious money in finding out how to fall asleep and how to stay asleep!
Darling pictures of the kids!
I too can relate to the no sleep part. My sleep is like waves - I go to sleep for a few hours then am up for 5 minutes to two hours and then repeat. I have things I do to help me get to sleep, but the staying asleep is a mystery. Hope you're in dreamland now.
Those kid are DANG cute! That is what Jessie looks like in my mind all the time. But I had forgotten how blonde Ryan is. I hope your sleep has evened out since this post. Sleep trouble makes me feel desperate.
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