Pop Art Selfie - A How To

I posted this selfie on Sunday for Ashley's Scavenger Hunt Sunday theme "bling" and for Selfie Saturday's theme "celebration." I got a couple questions asking how I did this and wondering what the picture looked like before hand. So I thought I'd show you the process and even the (eek!) SOOC version.

First of all, here is the picture I'm talking about.



Here is the complete SOOC version. (which I wasn't a fan of!)



Basically I draped some red cloth over some chairs and kneeled on the ground with my camera set up on a cabinet because my tripod was in my car and I didn't feel like going to get it! I used the remote and took about 20 versions of this picture, each one more off center and cut off then the one before! But I picked this one to work with.

First thing I noticed were these rolls where my sequined shirt bunched up.



I used the clone tool to copy the red background and smooth these edges so my waist had a cleaner line. Then I played with some actions. I ran Totally Rad's Super Fun Happy action, which you can get for free on their site.  I lowered the opacity and liked how the effect smoothed my skin.  Then I ran Coffee Shop's Color Orton action (also free) also at a low opacity which gave everything a bit of a glow.  Then I cropped the picture so you couldn't see where the red background ran out on top.



I liked the image much better at this point and almost left it as is. But I really wanted it to POP more! The actions I ran gave it a cool glow but also muted the red a little.  I remembered Ashley talking about a Pop Art setting on a website called Be Funky.  Its a free online editing website where you don't even have to sign up.  I uploaded the image above and started playing with their different filters and settled on this Pop Art filter.



I thought the image was much more fun this way, especially since I was using it for the themes "bling" and "celebration!"

Here are my different edits.



I might go back and play with the middle version and see if I can get the red to pop like in my final version without having the pop art filter, but for now, I am happy with how it looks.