Playing with photos

So... today I finished my finals. My reward: playing with a little photo editing :)

Here is my first try using Picnik for anything non-utilitarian (ie just for fun).

SOOC image

Edited image

I was trying to get an old-school feel with the partial black and white fade, and also resolve some of the composition issues that can come along with shooting with an auto-set point and shoot camera by modifying the focal point and softening the edges as would happen if I were better able to control the aperture and focal distance of my camera. I was bothered by how prominent the fence was in the SOOC image and very happy with the way the subject focus changed with the edited image. I can't decide if I like the full color soft focus version or the fade to B/W version better.

Fun project :)


Addendum. Here is an additional image just for Michael.

Focal point edited as above, but with focal fade to B/W
so the color of the dog is unchanged but the background fades.