During my recent August Snaps project I carried my Canon G9 with me everywhere throughout the month of August in an effort to make creative photos every day. However on a couple of occassions I did indeed also make some ‘normal’ snapshots.

So today I thought I would share an image of my daughter, Laura, at one of the local playgrounds and how I transformed a very ordinary snapshot into a much more visually interesting image in just a few mouse clicks. What I’m showing you here doesn’t require any special Photoshop skills and it can be done in less than a couple of minutes.

Laura - Before (original RAW file)

As you can see this is a very ordinary snapshot which is even a bit underexposed as a result of the bright sunlit background and it’s also not quite sharp where it should be. Nevermind. I converted the image to black and white using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and then I opened it in Adobe Photoshop CS4 for further processing using the onOne Software Plug-In Suite 4.5 for Photoshop.

Don’t forget you can get 20% off any of onOne Software’s products by using the 24SEVEN coupon code when you make a purchase at onOne Software.

Laura - a simple conversion to B&W

Lightroom Settings

As you can see on the left I have simply hit ‘Grayscale’ to convert the original image to black and white and then I increased the Exposure setting by +1.16, the Recovery setting by +61, added some Fill Light at +11 and deepened the blacks a little bit by increasing Blacks by +13.

I could have easily experimented further by visiting the Grayscale Mix panel, but I was after a quick and easy result here, so I settled for the above look as I knew I would be experimenting further in the onOne Software Plug-In Suite 4.5.

I used the FocalPoint and PhotoTools plug-ins from the Plug-In Suite 4.5 to create the effects you see in the final image image below.

The FocalPoint Plug-in helped me to create all the blur you see around Laura in the final image. It is a very user-friendly program which does all the heavy lifting for you. It gives you a focal point which can place anywhere in your image along with several handles around the focalpoint which you can manipulate to control the placement and amount of blur in your image.

I have circled my focalpoint in red in the screen shot below, indicating the approximate placement and size of my chosen focalpoint.

The FocalPoint Interface

Finally I threw the PhotoTools Pro Plug-in at the image and applied the B&W KPZ II Grainy Film A1 setting and toned it back a little to give the image a film look.

Laura - After (final image)

Oh, I almost forgot, of course the edge effect around the final image was also made using the PhotoFrame Pro Plug-in.

If all of this sounds like a lot, it really was a walk-in-the-park to achieve this effect. It has taken me ten times longer to prepare this post, than it did to create the final image.

However if you don’t want to be playing around with software plug-ins you can of course also achieve this effect in-camera by using one of the excellent Lensbaby series lenses. My preferred Lensbaby is the Composer which looks like this:

For more information and the latest price on the Lensbaby Composer series visit the Lensbaby website.

I hope you enjoyed this second Before and After tutorial which I plan as a regular feature here at Photography 24/7.

Thanks for stopping by!

If you liked this article, you may also like these:

• How to do Advanced Toning in Photoshop CS4 – Part Four
• Before and After: Polaroid Grasses
• How to do Advanced Toning in Photoshop CS4 – Part Three