Time to choose someone to guest post and demonstrate their photo improvements from our last photo improvement contest. I would like to invite the following two blogs to guest post here on Linky Tools and demonstrate their photo improvement techniques. They will also be awarded the Linky Tools HONORARY BLOG EXPERT badge.
- Jennifer at Hope Studios
- Shannon at Throwing Our Arms Open
(Instructions to winners: contact me and let me know you are aware you were chosen. Then, write a blog post explaining and demonstrating your techniques. Describe what you did, what software, etc. Be sure to include photos and screenshots if you can. If you’ll write the post and publish it on YOUR blog, then I can get the code I need from your blog to publish it on Linky Tools.)
My choices are not necessarily a proclamation of “the best”; it’s a combination of “best, interesting, unique” or something that just caught my attention. We will do lots of these, so don’t worry… you’ll have endless opportunities to “win”.
Brent’s Demonstration
Now, here’s my own version of improving this photo… here’s the original straight of my little pocket camera:
My first reaction is: details lost in the dark areas; lots of unneeded background; nothing visually “wow” to grab you; stark contrasts from light to dark will take some careful adjustments; color is a little dull. Remember, you can only do so much with a bad original. Your first line of defense for good photos is a good camera. Second line of defense? Know how to use your camera! (Insert shameless plug for my Digital Photography book… click here)
Note: this is NOT a tutorial on how to use Photoshop. I’m going to tell you what I did but leave it to you to educate yourself on how to do the same in your own software. I’m trying to teach you how to view a photo, how conceptualize improvement, and learn the basic general types of techniques.
Dark Shadows
The first thing to do is try to lighten up, naturally, the dark areas where all the details are lost. To do this, play around with tools such as “Shadows & Highlights”, Levels, Exposure, Curves, etc. Your software will have equivalents to some or all of these. It is the ability to lighten, dark, change contrast and adjust gamma.
Okay, now we can see some detail in the dark areas and overall, the photo doesn’t “look” dark now.
Color Correction
Next. brighten up the colors over all. They are kind of lifeless at this point. Look for tools that deal with Hue, Saturation, Vibrance, etc.
Now the color in the clothing and background looks better but there are “hot spots” of over saturation (too much color, not natural) in the faces and in Abby’s dress. Let’s fix that by using our MASKING tools to select on those areas, then turning DOWN the saturation on those areas.
Not only did I desaturate the color in the faces (toned down the color intensity), I also “moved” the color of the faces slightly towards yellow so that it would more natural.
Sharpening
Now, time to sharpen the photo. It’s a little soft (fuzzy, not in focus). It’s hard to get a really sharp photo with a pocket camera. You can’t really see the sharpening all that well unless we zoom in:
Above is before sharpening…. this next image is after sharpening. See how the faces and detail is more “crisp”:
At this stage we have the color, sharpness and shadow/highlights about as good as they can be. So now it’s time to do something interesting with the cropping, borders, vignette… whatever floats your boat.
Creativity
Here’s what I did:
I rotated it counter-clockwise a little bit; then did one of my favorite techniques that I really love because it brings real depth to the photo: have parts of the image come “out” of the photo. I use to do this a LOT in a sports magazine I co-created. It really set the publication apart. It’s become somewhat of a signature trademark of my blog photos.
That’s my attempt. What do you think. Leave an opinion or response in this Response Linky by Linky Tools:
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