Touch-Up Tuesday: Musical Notes

This photo happens to be of one of my favorite piano pieces... The Cat and Mouse by Aaron Copland. I'm playing it for a competition this spring :D Here's a link to what it sounds like...

Anyway. Now to the PICTURES!
I kind of sped through my edit... so I didn't keep track of ALL the steps.

In general, though, I ran the RAW version through Adobe Camera RAW, brightened it up a lot, added contrast, and reduced the noise caused by my way-too-high ISO (which was in turn caused by my laziness to find more light =P).

Then I took it into Photoshop Elements, cropped it, and removed the "long" from above the fermata. (It looked weird almost sticking out of the photo.) I might have done some more brightness/contrast/etc adjustments here, I'm not sure.

Then I ran CoffeeShop's Give It Texture action using ShadowHouse's Lost texture, and played a lot with the layers and opacities and such.
(Side note: Yes I know I need to learn how to apply a texture on my own, without an action... I will try that sometime, no worries.)

I ran some action (or two or three) to give it the vintage-y look. I don't remember which one(s), sorry. :P

(Another side note: I'd also like to develop the ability to do a vintagy look on my own... Or just how to do what all the actions do myself. Again, something I will try sometime.)

*****

SOOC



EDITED



So there it is. Constructive criticism on both the photography and the edit is definitely WELCOMED.


(In case you don't know, my stance on constructive criticism is the following: How am I supposed to get any better at photography/editing if no one tells me whats wrong with my pictures? :P)