Photoshop is awesome.

I know, I know, it's supposed to be Maggie's column today... but I've been working so hard on getting a website set up (I love AF, but it's not the same as having your own website) that I just haven't had time to get another of her columns.

So... instead I'm going to blab about the photo I just added to my homepage. It's amazing what you can do with photoshop tools.

Here's the before:

and after:

I'm obviously not an expert, I just know my way around the program better than the average person. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out Maggie and put her on a separate layer. Then I used the dodge tool (set to highlights and 5% exposure) to turn most of the background immediately surrounding each necklace white. I then lassoed those (regular lasso, not magnetic) and put them on another layer. Then I just went in with the eraser with the hardness set to 0% and did some touchups.

After that all I had to do was hide the layer with the original image and add a white background layer. I also rearranged a bit - I made Maggie bigger and moved her closer to the jewelry, removed the quartz necklace and added a shadow behind Maggie so she didn't look like she was floating.

Hopefully in the future I'll be able to make it look less amateur-ish, but for now it serves its purpose.