Hi Michelle, the fuji 400 and 8oo is just a month over, the rest is at just about a year. I'm in Iowa. Send me an addy and consider it yours.mI know you'll put it to good use.

Top drake, center just behind the female looking to the right at the other females.. Me thinks that is Opus...

Second on cynlee with the first one.

First I adjusted hue/saturation to help with the yellow cast. Then I adjusted curves to find where I liked the contrast a bit. Then I adusted levels only rgb finding another point I liked. Then one final adjustment in curves.

Then the fun part started. g Cloning, painting, erasing, and layers. I made a new layer for each section of necklace so that I could clone underneath ridding any traces I didn't like. Each part of the necklace is from one selection in each section. The pearl knot( if you can call it that) was made from about 5 layers each overlapping the other just a bit. Then after I had it all looking the way I liked I used the blur tool to lightly blend it in and get rid of the cloned look.

Then last but not least I flattened the image made a duplicate layer and applied a small, .7 pixels, gaussian blur and lowered it's opacity to about 65% to ease the grain a little.

Hope this helps you out.. Thanks for letting me play with it.. And here's my palytime.. Doug (sorry about the long post)

Ummm.. No first I did levels then curves for brightness and contrast. Then desaturated and added a toning layer. But now that I see this at work I have it too dark and too grainy. That's what I get for trying this on my laptop in bed at 3 am. Have fun with this, but a warning, it is addictive.. L Doug

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=688877&Start=37&Sectionid=8&filter_genre_id=0&WhatsN

Hey Micheal, Not sure how much you're wanting to spend but you really don't need a lot to get decent shots with the 10D. I just shot my wife's cousin's wedding in Phoenix last weekend with mine and the 380EX flash,(had this from my elan setup), and was very happy with the results. I set my ISO at 200 only turned the flash off for the ceremony shots on aperture priority. I'll post a few tomorrow for you. They're still on my laptop. For the bracket I went with Donald's advice and got the stroboframe vh2000 and wouldn't trade it for any other. I've used the quickflip styles and much prefer the vh2000. I took one strobe with me but never used it. Only had 20 minutes to shoot all the formals and such after the wedding ceremony. I've tried the 550ex from the studio on my 10D but seem to get underexposed shots. Could be the settings on it but the boss doesn't have instructions for it. Personally I wouldn't mind having a set of 3 550's plus the transmitter for weddings. Would sure beat setting up strobes for formals. Anyway hopes this answers a bit of your question, if not I'll try again.. Take care.. Doug

Great work Donald. You definitely have a knack for it. Can only imagine the fun you are having with this. Can't wait to see more of your work.

Hey Donald and Micheal, I agree with both of ya. I guess I should have stated that this is a personal project, not the one that will go to her, to see how far I could go with an image and still keep it real. Sorry for not making that clearer. Donald, I still plan on adding skin texture to get rid of the airbushed look. I'm not a fan of the totally smooth skin look myself. Micheal, I like the idea of sepia on the after print, hadn't thought of that. Giving her a print of the after version is what made me think of the second question. Unfortunately, even if I made her one, she would not get it. My bosses do not believe in giving away anything that took time or can have a dollar amount attached to it. Not too mention I am thin ground here of late. I have become friends with the owner of the new studio in town and that is verboten. Anyhow thanks for the feedback.. Doug

Attached Link: http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

Correction to that last post. It's a $1.80 for an 8x10 through ftp yo the lab if you are on the Certified Print Partner program. Which basically means that you calibrate your monitor once every 2 weeks and that you'll you except the colors the way they are when you get them back. Unless of course they botched the job noticably. I have had 100's printed through the print partner program and haven't had to send one back yet and they always look just like they did on my monitor.

No need to establish a line of credit, you can pay as you go, charge it to your card, or establish a line of credit. I just have them charge it to my card once a month. Let's see, for a roll of 120 say fifteen shots runs about $15.00 for processing and proofing. Plus they put your copyright info, neg density and other info on the back of the proof. If you call them they'll gladly send you a price and service list on cd. They don't charge for supplies either, mailers, proof and order envelopes, mask cards and such. Let's see, it's $4.20 I believe for an 8x10 for film and $1.80 for an 8x10 from a digital file when you ftp to the lab. Thinking the lab ought to give me a discount for recommendations... L