Rapture! It feels great, wonderful and exciting! You hurry home to show all your friends and family only to discover that something went awry.
AGGGGGGHHHHHH!
Well have no fear there are many photo editing programs and tricks that can help you salvage your precious capture. The good news is some of them are even FREE!
First let me find a example picture...
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| Our lovely model today is my very daughter ; ) |
Okay you may be saying that there isn't a whole lot wrong with this picture, Right?
I have to tell you for the most part I would agree with you. She has a great expression and has a great sparkle in her eyes. But the evening we took this we had the most gorgeous light, color temperature is off and her face is just a bit darker than I would like it. So lets see what we can do to fix it, shall we?
One of my favorite FREE programs to use is Picasa. .Here's a link to get ya there.
Very beginner friendly and easy to use. Good for basic fixes and has a good selection of "artistic" features.
First off I want to lighten her face and adjust the temperature (fancy way of saying color adjustment) of the overall picture. Both of these are found under the tuning tab in Picasa. Okay lets see how that worked out for me......
OH That is much better! Hmmm....I think it needs a little bit of sharpening, so lets do that next. That is located under the effects tab. Zoom in on your picture so you can get a really good look at what your are doing with this one.
The saying "if a little is good...more is better" DOES NOT apply here! Too much sharpening can create what we photogs call "noise". It's that funny speckling or pixelation that happens when you uber sharpen your photos. Do just enough to bring all your details into a clean focus. You will like you results a lot better if you do this.
From there we can start to have fun with it. Add all sorts of effects, B/W, Sepia, Soft Focus so on and so forth. Lets' see how she looks with some of those.
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| last picture was edited with Piknik a online editing program partner of Picasa |
There a not so great picture saved! So what are you waiting for? Get brave, go put on your creative britches and start creating something special. I would love to see what you all come up with.
Thanks for explaining some of those mysteries on Picasa. All of your kids are so photogenic - you have ready made models. Diane
ReplyDeleteWell some days they are NOT so willing. Ha ha ha. Being a child of a photographer can be rough. Your face gets plastered everywhere. Maybe I will use one of my own self portraits next time. Scary thought.
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