Monday, September 20, 2010

Photo Editing for Fashion Bloggers 101 with Swirly

Hello darlings, Swirly here! As Second Life's number one fashion blogger for more years than she cares to remember, Swirly thought it was time to give something back to the little people. That's right, Swirly is going to share some of her most closely guarded fashion blogging secrets just with you!

Swirly knows you've all seen those other so called photo editing tutorials and is sure you'll agree - what are those girls smoking? Dodge and burn? Liquify? We want to make the pictures pretty darlings, not destroy them.

Here we have a snapshot straight out of Second Life. Yes, even with the ever radiant Swirly these pictures do look quite lackluster before we pretty them up, don't they? Let's do something about it.

Start by opening your picture in your favorite image editing software. Swirly recommends MS Paint. That's because it's made by Microsoft, so you just know you can rely on it to be the best quality software darlings. Try to stay awake for this bit, Swirly knows it's tedious. Now print the picture and close your image editor, you don't need it anymore dear.

Once you have printed your picture, you need to crop it. Use sharp scissors, and remember the "Rule of Thirds", which means you musn't crop more than one third of the picture away because it's quite wasteful. Think of the environment, and do recycle.

Now for the fun bit darlings, and where you can let your true talent shine through - editing the photo! You will need crayons in a wide range of colors, at least 8, or you risk your picture looking slightly unnatural. The best quality crayons come with a "tan" color for the skin tone, but pale pink mixed with white for highlights is a good second best darlings. Swirly recommends yellow for hair, but this may not work if you are not blond. Put lots of color into your picture and remove every hint of dullness.

Once you've finished editing your picture you will need to "scan" it to get it back on to your computer. Because this is very technical, Swirly recommends that you ask your husband to do it for you. Swirly always gets the nice boy at the copy shop to do it for her. And darlings, here is the stunning end result, that's all there is to it!


Skin - Tres Blah
Clothes - Pig
Hair - Bliss Couture and ZsaZsa's House of Beauty
Jewelry - Paper Couture
Lashes - Glow Studio