Challenge: I actually am combining two challenges, here. One is the black/white challenge, the other is a favorite episode. All these caps are from the first season episode, "Angel," when Buffy first discovers the truth about Angel. Hey, if you really stretch, you can go for a third challenge, since this one is also basically borderless! Maybe that should be a challenge...use as many challenges as possible in one piece! :)

Info: I thought these two challenges fit perfectly together, because this episode was the first time when good and evil weren't as clearly defined for Buffy. And, of course, it's one of my all time favorites. It looks like an easy one, and it really wasn't hard to put together, but I did have a hard time getting a good color balance because the screencaps I liked were really, really dark. (Got them from "a buffy screencap site," in case you're wondering) I brightened them as much as I could using brightness and contrast, but they got really grainy when I got them as bright as I wanted them. The middle pic was originally an overlay to brighten their faces, and then set to a high transparency, but when I got rid of the underlying image, I really liked the ghostly look of the overlay, so I left it. The other two images in the corners I brightened as much as I could and tried using overlays, which didn't work. Instead, I ended up painting white over parts of their faces as a highlight, and then making those layers only slightly opaque, so the highlights were just a tiny bit brighter. THEN, I remembered a technique of Vrya's which I found poking around on her website. I ended up using the magic wand tool to choose the whiter parts of the faces, copy to another layer and brighten those layers. Much improved! :) And less work than the paint by hand! The quote is, of course, from the episode "Angel," and the top part...well, I made that up. The main font at the top is Lucinda Console. The other one is AdineKirnberg Script.