I realize I have been somewhat remiss in just plain old posting regularly this summer, and I’ll try to do better… :) We’ve had a lovely, lazy weekend in the 100+ degree weather, mostly staying inside except for the trek out to the cheapy sushi place (The Boy’s pick) on friday, with a wandering through Target afterwards. I snapped this pic on the grate – very Marilyn!- with my phone’s facebook app, so the quality was mediocre. I gussied it up a bit in photoshop, giving it a bit of a trendy instagram look. [I’ve been Instagramming (I’m dotdorsner) on my phone quite a bit and I must admit it is a bit addictive. If you’re interested in stalking me, I send most of them to twitter.]

New Stuff on Dabbled:

I cleaned up some stuff I’ve been meaning to do around Dabbled yesterday, so you’ll notice a few changes – nothing major.  I added Facebook comments as an option, and changed out the font, and cleaned up the formatting of the comments section.  I also added new and better share buttons, including Pinterest and Google Plus (and a “Pin It” hover link on photos, that I’m not sure I’m keeping, it seems a bit buggy – let me know what you guys think.)   I’ll be making a few more changes in the next few weeks if I have time, to make things easier to find around here.  So stay tuned!

Lazy Sunday

Today, however has just been pure lazy.  This morning early, The Boy & I walked down to the market to pick up some food for breakfast (my fridge is pitifully neglected!) and even then it was starting to get hot. So we’ve stayed in the rest of today while the Boy and the Husband played LEGO Batman 2 on the Wii (which I totally recommend, they are loving it).

Phone Photo Photoshopping Tips

So here’s the before and after on the photo, and the basic steps to get there:

Your quick and dirty photoshop tutorial (assumes photoshop knowledge):
1) Crop to a better size (I went for square)
2) Use the Levels sliders to bump up contrast a bit
3) Do a faux cross-processing using Curves
4) Draw a large oval in the center and use Feather to feather the edges of the selection greatly (amount will depend on the pixel size of your photo). Use Curves (drag up) to lighten the center just a bit.
5) Select and feather another large oval, then select inverse. Use Curves (drag down) do darken the edges.

Your mileage may vary, of course, as every photo is different, but play around with these ideas on your next mediocre phone photo!