Instagram Challenge Day 13 - A Free Deal Instead!

Today's challenge was to take a selfie without makeup.  Any selfie I take of myself these days is done sans makeup.  I haven't worn makeup in ages.  In fact, I don't even have any.  I think I bought some mascara a few months ago, but Texter has it.  So rather than bore scare you with a picture of me as you see me every day, I thought I would pass on this little gem I discovered - Perfect Effects 8 Free Edition. 

It works with Photoshop, which is how it came to my attention, but apparently you can use it as a stand alone program, without having Photoshop.  This afternoon I played with it a bit and will share some of the before and after pictures to give you an idea of how it worked for me.

This is the original we took at Spring Meadow Lake of Lady K earlier in the week.

This is with a couple of filters applied and a torn edge border.

  

For a vintage photograph look.

And a couple of filters and a soft oval edge.

Not content with just pictures of Lady K, I pulled a few more pictures from my files to play with.

Once again, the before picture of Morrell Falls I took a few weeks ago.  With this picture I went with some of the black and white options you can apply. 

A couple of filters and an edge applied.

This picture I really, really liked how it turned out.  Very Ansel Adams-ish if I say so myself.  I might have to have this one printed out and hung. 

This one I pulled into Photoshop and played a bit more with it.  But you can begin to see some of the effects you can achieve with Perfect Effects 8.  It was very easy to download and install and start using.  I recommend you watch their video tutorial.  It's not long and it walks you through the program.  Helpful, especially if you are not familiar with a program like Photoshop.

Once again the before....

And the final picture was additional Photoshop play.  But the first two were in Perfect Effects 8 and you can see the richness you can get with colors and the borders they have are a lot of fun.  There are also textures you can apply for a film scratch, grunge, crumpled paper effects.  Hours and hours of digital photo play.

And one last picture I played with, a couple of different filters and a border to give it that vintage photo look.

If anyone does download and use it I would really like to hear how it worked for them.