Orton Effect... Daydreamify your photos.

One of my favorite little photoshop techniques is a simple little process called the "Orton Effect." It's named after photographer Micheal Orton who figured out a way to use multiple slides to develop this hazy-watercolory look. It's best on nature photos, the brighter colored, the better. However, on certain photos of people or buildings, it can also be neat. I use this tutorial to do this in Photoshop. If you don't have photoshop, GIMP is a free program you can download that I find to be a very good alternative to photoshop... Here is an Orton Effect tutorial for GIMP.

Here are some of my photos that I have used the Orton Effect on (Originals below each):

































On Some of these, the last one, for instance, I really upped the saturation of the photos' colors, as well as the contrast. Play with making the photo brighter, more saturated, etc. before you apply the Orton effect. It makes the effect even more versatile! For more examples of Orton effect photos, check out this Flickr group.