Anatomy of a Blog Banner

As you know, I recently totally revamped my blog.  As part of the revamp I created a new blog banner for the top of my blog.  I knew which photos I wanted to include, but making them have the look and feel that I was looking for was pretty trial and error.

First I used the photos as is.  This was too bright and jarring.

Then I lowered the opacity of the photos to make them less jarring.  It still didn’t look right.

Then I made the photos black & white.  But I didn’t like how some of the photos looked a little dingy and not bright.

So I tried brightening up the photo on the left a bit.  I thought this banner looked pretty good, but I was not wow’ed.

Then I opened up Rad Lab and used the Pool Party filter layered with the Flirt filter.  This was the exact feel & look that I was looking for!

So that’s the story of the different iterations of the new blog banner.  :)