Folks, I am days behind in editing photos. Because of this, there will be no Friday Finds this week. I’m sorry! You can browse through previous weeks and check out my currently surfing page if you want to find some great links!
This week I purchased Patti Brown’s Kaleidoscope Light Set and MCP Action’s Quickie Collection and All in the Details. For serious, I would buy just about everything the two of them have to offer if I could. Now that I’ve downloaded a bazillion actions and textures, it takes me 12 times as long to edit a photo because I’m trying to learn how to use them. The learning curve is also why a lot of my photos are coming out over-processed lately. It takes experience to be able to predict how a photo is going to respond to an action and be able to subtly tweak it.
Despite the fact that I may never finish editing photos from Wednesday, I got all giddy when I remembered (thanks to Newbie Photo Lover) that it is Fix it Friday!
The picture this week is an absolutely gorgeous self-portrait taken by Susan Keller of Short on Words. It has a natural sun flare in the upper right hand corner which I think is awesome. So many photographers view sun flares as horrible mistakes they should have corrected when setting up the shot, but I completely disagree. Immediately I was excited to be able to play off the light in this photo with some of the Kaleidoscope Light Set overlays!
I wanted to share more than just the one photo edit I did last week, so I saved the photo at each step in my editing process. There are also tons of links throughout the article to explain some of the techniques I’m referring to.
Please remember that I am just learning how to use Photoshop; I am not an expert in it! If you have anything additional to add or corrections about using these features, I welcome you to leave a comment!
Edit #1 – Basic Stuff
I started out with very basic corrections. Exposure, curves and color correction. Those are all done by manually adjusting the levels primarily by eye and using the histogram until it looks better. “Better” is very subjective! I’ve found some days my opinion of what looks good is completely different than other days.
I also wanted to change the angle a bit. I didn’t want the horizon to be level since the tilt is part of the charm of this photo, but I wanted it to be less tilted. I selected all and used Edit > Free Transform (CTRL + T) to adjust it until it looked like a good angle to me. Afterward, I cropped out the white edges caused by the layer moving. I did have to sample and clone in bottom left hand corner because I wanted more of the hill in the photo than the canvas allowed.
Edit #2 – Basic Color and Crispness Pop
I used MCP All in the Details {Extreme Colors} and {Telescope}. I probably used something else, but I can’t recall what. My computer was giving me problems around this time and I saved the .psd file to reboot and my history was erased. I’m sure there’s a setting to keep the history when saving a file, but I don’t have time to find it at the moment.
If this were a family photo I wanted to print, I would probably stop here. Like I said though, I’m itching to use my textures and overlays, so I’m going to play with some of that and see what happens!
Edit #3: Kaleidoscope
I used the following Patti Brown’s Kaleidoscope textures and overlays to achieve this:
- Light Set: Sun Shower (right) – Screen – 30%
- Light Set: Twighlight – Normal – 65% (To put some of the blue back into the sky…)
- Gallery Collection: Meadow 3 – Soft Light – 81% (Removed most of the effect from their faces and clothes.)
I’m still not 100% sold on the layer to color the sky, but I like the addition of the other two layers.
What do you think? Over the top, or still natural looking? Which of my edits do you prefer?
I can’t wait to get around to everyone else’s edits! As usual, if you want to make sure I check out yours first, please leave me a comment prompting me to go see what you did.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
I really like edit #3!!! I think #1 is not far enough, #2 is too far, and #3 is just about there. I think the color is a bit off, but overall, a great edit!
Really like that 3rd edit.
Twitter: @Buckeroomama
I agree with the rest… edit #3 would be my pick, too.
Great job!
I was really glad that you corrected the tilt of the photos a bit. It was making me a little squirmy.
I thought that it was a bit too much crispness after the color and crispness pop action. If you look closely, the crow’s lines around the mom’s eyes are really apparent in this one and it’s just something I’m not a fan of. It just seems a bit harsh.
The final photo is better than the original: the faces are better lit, the angle is not so vertigo-inducing, and the faces are better situated in my opinion.
Twitter: @PhotoLynda
Thanks. I agree about the crispness!
I prefer edit 3. On edit 2, the child’s face looks a little unnaturally dark against the background and considering the angle of the light. Your edits on #3 really warm up the photo, which I love. And I COMPLETELY agree with your adjustment of the horizon line. This is much much better.
It was hard for me to see a significant difference in a lot of your edits till you showed the original and your final side-by-side. I LOVE the angle and crop you chose for the final edit–it makes a world of difference, compared to the original.
I’m not so sure about the crispness and colors of your final version–I think the subjects still look a little washed out (though they might just be pale white people, which is hard to fix)… but overall, I like that you played up the sun flare, I love the new angle, and the closer crop makes it an absolutely perfect snapshot.
(I’m a big fan of snapshot photography, much moreso than anything portraited or posed or planned. I really like the original here and what you did to it makes it one I’d pick for a family album.)
Twitter: @PhotoLynda
Kathy, wow! Thank you so much for your thoughtful and helpful criticism. Color correction is so difficult for me; I really need to read into it more and take a more calculated approach than adjusting it by eye.
Thanks again!
I really like the last version! Great edit!
Just a tip since some of the comments had mentioned the wrinkles on mom’s face standing out after the crispness action, I’m not familiar with that action but if you use it on a duplicate layer, you can mask out parts of an action that you don’t want on the picture so that the “crispness” is only applied where you want the picture sharper and left out where you don’t want it.
Twitter: @PhotoLynda
Thank you Cheryle! I do know about masking out parts of the effect I don’t want applied, I just didn’t here. (Well, I did a little bit, but obviously not enough!)