Photo Editing

I love taking photos. The thrill of capturing a moment in time is like catching fireflies for me: you must be quick and careful and contemplate your strategy before you take your shot. Unfortunately, my photo-taking abilities are not always up to par. But there is help! Photoshop. Ohhh how I love Photoshop. 

Editing software allows me to create the look I intended but may not have achieved initially when I snapped that photo. It's a beautiful thing.

Today I had the fortunate opportunity to edit some already beautiful photos. These were all taken by a lovely friend of mine who has a knack for capturing those once in a lifetime moments with her camera. You can see more of her wonderful work here.

She took these gorgeous fall pictures of my little girl last week and sent me the disks to do with them as I pleased (yes, she is that awesome). So here are some examples of what I did.

The top is the original and the bottom is edited. Can you see the difference? It's subtle, but sometimes the smallest change makes the biggest difference. All I did here was brighten the face to define the features better. Easy? Yes. Happy? Very.

Again, subtle lighting changes to brighten the photo, but this time I tweaked the saturation a bit. I think she looks like a little angel in this one. Original on left, edited on right.

In this one, I lightened the photo and really cranked up the saturation to give it these really warm hues and a bright pop of color.

In this next photo, I added a lighting filter. I added a spotlight to the picture to draw the focus more to her face, and in this one I actually DE-saturated the colors a little to give it more of a muted look.  Original on left, edited on right.

And in this final photo (which happens to be my favorite) I really muted the tones by desaturating the picture. I also added a spotlight filter to dim the edges oh so slightly and light up her pretty little eyes.

Overall, I am soooo satisfied with the little work I put into editing these. I was lucky enough to have such beautiful photos to begin with, and now I have put a little bit of my own style into them! 

Check in tomorrow for drawing tips and ideas!

Now go make something, and enjoy the day!