Holiday Greeting Card Idea

Every year, my wife and I like to send out a postcard for the holidays.  No, it's not a novel idea by any stretch of the imagination.  Being the crazy creative people we are, we're always trying to come up with some unique ideas and I think we succeeded this time around.  We saw some pretty cool pictures of kids with lights on Pinterest, and we knew our son really liked them and would be an easy distraction to take some cool portraits of him. 

Off we went, and taking the pictures were quite easy, then it just came down to editing the final image which I thoroughly enjoy of course.

Here's a step by step of how I did it...and yes, unfortunately, you need to have some Photoshop skills.

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Step 1. We had the original image...but I was struck by how "red" AJ's face turned out so I had to think of a way to tone it down a bit.

Step 2. Turning the photo to black and white was a natural step, however, then you lose the entire purpose of the props...the colored lights!

Step 3. A quick remedy is to turn the color of the lights back on!  (Thank you, Photoshop!)  I also turned up the black a bit to add a tad more contrast since it seemed a little washed out.  Okay, now we're getting somewhere!

Step 4. I've learned one thing doing art over the years...often times, the most SUBTLE things are the most IMPORTANT things.  I had to make sure the light in AJ's eyes reflected colored light too!  It just adds so much to it!

Step 5. Add your greeting, and you're done!  In this instance, we made this a postcard so we could write a personal message on the back.  Here's the final image!

Not only do you get a great greeting card, but you can turn it into your favorite personalized holiday wall art! (photo courtesy of housebeautiful.com)

...AND, you get to keep all of the precious outtakes too!

 

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