Enhanced family and friend pictures

hi, I found your site and i was amazed by the aftermath of the photos. Im just wonderin if you could do a lil favor and use your skills to pimp out some pictures. thank you. DJ

BEFORE

A typical snapshot taken in a house.
There’s lots going on and lots of other things in the picture.

PIMPED

So we’re in a digital aged unrestrained by specific print sizes.
We can change the demensions.

We can get rid of the rest of what’s going on in the picture and focus on what’s important.
The family is important.

Very typical edits to rescue the picture from the lack of developement in the camera.
Cameras are very very conservative in how they edit your JPGs, but they do that so that you can develope them how you like.
It’s harder to undo overdevelopement than to add it.

Anyway these pictures were very low resolution pictures so it was harder to play around with.
RAW file format or a larger file size helps to let you play around more with the pixels and have some more lee-way.

There’s a spot on the picture that needed to be fixed in photoshop.
But this is about fast 30-90 second edits… so i opted not to take it into photoshop.

This picture really needed to have an edit that matched the subject.
I think I got a little closer to what it needed.

It’s often about picking an edit style to match the subject matter.

Again it wasn’t a very large picture so i couldn’t stretch it too far.
But i did some auto white balance in lightroom… made the whites more like white.

I think every picture from a point and click really really could use some extra contrast in the picture.

And I really think the crop on the left hand side was well done in regards to how it worked with the drums.

Amanda’s Senior Picture

“So I have been looking for someone to help me edit my senior pictures. Could you help me out please?”

THE BEFORE

THE PIMPED PICTURE

What did i do?
I checked to see if the White balance was good. Camera did a good job.
I used some noise reduction which you won’t see in this small of a picture anyway.
I worked on contrast so it would stand out and clarity.
And then i just decided she wanted something that stands out a little more so I just grabbed a preset i had made in lightroom.
It seemed to work good and that was about it.
I also added a little red tone to the picture overall… I don’t know if that was the best decision. But it’s done anyway.
All this took a little longer than i usually spend on a picture. About 90 seconds

The thing that is time consuming is:
the downloading from email, importing into lightroom, exporting the enhanced and unenhanced, making the blog post, uploading both pictures, and writing what i did, then writing this. haha
It just goes to show you how fast and easy editing is when you learn some good tricks.

Time to get this party rolling again.

Great idea but I’ve been slack on implementation.

I am teaching a photo editing class this saturday and I’m sure I’ll have some takers to become part time posters to the site.

Anyone else doing quick lightroom edits making ordinary pictures good or good pictures great just let me know and we’ll look into having you be a contributor.

First Time For Everything — Even Editing

“After” Image #1

 

I raised the exposure, recovery, fill light ,contrast, and temp.  Then I lowered the clarity and saturation and did a little blemish removal.

“Before” Image #1

“After” Image #2

This was my veryfirst attempt at editing so I had to play with it a lot to get it to where I wanted it.  First I applied the preset “direct positive” and then did a custom white balance using the white in his shirt.  I smoothed out his chapped lips using the “heal brush” and then adjusted all the settings until I came up with the final edit.

“Before” Image #2

“After” Image #3

For this picture I cropped and angled it, then added the “Aged Photo” preset.  Then I lowered the Clarity and Recovery and raised the fill light, blacks, and contrast.  To finish it I tweaked the rest of the settings a tiny bit until I liked how it looked.

“Before” Image #3

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Pimped out Pictures #5

IMAGE 1

(Above: Enhanced picture)

I thought the picture warranted a bright look so that’s what was done
And then a little but of cropping to go with a more landscape look than boxish

(Above: The Original)

IMAGE 2

(Above: Enhanced Version)

The story seemed to be about the girl waving to the pageant girl.
The rest seemed to just distract from the story.
So I just cropped in leveled it and lightened it up a bit.
I would have cropped in a bit further but I kept the whole word “City”

(Above: The Original)

IMAGE 3

(Above: Enhanced Version)

Just give it some color and life.
A more light a slight vignette, darken the people in the back.
Some saturation and a bit more contrast.
More of an artistic flavor to the artsy kind of picture

(Above: The Original)

Call for Submissions

I’m looking for some more submissions from people who are interested.

Send in a couple of pictures. Or send a few more than a few and I’ll select my favorite few.

jarvie@jarviedigital.com

Post 4 (Stumped?)

OK I’m not perfect… I know you all thought I was.

Some pictures are hard.

You need to learn how to pick your fights… most of the time I’d skip over these types, but these were the only two my friend sent.

So I gave it a shot.
One was obviously a scanned pictures… which makes it a lot harder to play with contrast and decrease the pixelation/noise without a good photoshop plugin (or rescanning the original negative)

Other ideas?

IMAGE #1

ORIGINAL

Don’t get me wrong… I Love the blue slide!
It’s just the blue smurf kid that bothers me.

No color is easier to deal with… and creates a more Moody picture, focusing on the expression and the funness of the situation and less on the blueness of it all.

I also opted for the exagerated vignette… and made sure you could see the face very well.

IMAGE #2

Original Scanned Image – Doesn’t look half as grainy in it’s small form.
And it’s a look you come to expect in old film pictures.

Who knows if this isn’t worse… But I do find myself focusing more on their expressions.

Pimped out Pictures #3

Lauren has been following my PhotoBlog for a little while now therefore I was more than happy to edit a couple extra pictures for her.

She sent in 8 and I selected 4 of them… on most cases I had two ideas in mind.

IMAGE #1

ORGINAL

Not bad to begin with… Right?
We don’t always Pimp the bad pictures.

Brighten it up a touch.
Make the subject stand out.
Help the eyes and the hair to pop out.

Try it in another way for a totally different mood.

In wedding pictures it’s my opinion you can’t have “Normal” pictures…
They have to have that something special.
Or…. they’re normal

IMAGE #2

ORIGINAL – A Good Picture!

Make her a bit more important by cropping out a bit of the unnecessary sides of the picture.
(Gotta cut off from the sides when you’re cropping to an 8×10 print anyway.)

When cutting the sides… I kept the left side with a decent border of the rt angled wall thing.
On the right I tried to make the diagonal line intersect at the corner.

I also straightened up the picture to make it a bit more even.

Again Brighten her up.
Here I helped out the rose a bit and the eyes… (not too hard to see here compared to the big file)

A little stronger picture with a different mood.
Stronger… by stronger contrasts and stronger blacks.
Plus the vignette adds a lot.

Which one is more pleasing to you?

IMAGE #3

ORIGINAL
Everything was evenly exposed which is nice…
But it doesn’t leave me with a lot to do.

Crop in a bit on the image a bit and brighten it up.
A really short 30 second edit on Lightroom.
(When you have an idea right up front what you want to do)

IMAGE #4

This couple portrait had such a strong hint of red/orange from the background.
It was my particular desire to change that up and pull them out of the background a bit.

Not completely pleased with it all…
but it’s hard when the colors of the scene permeated everything pretty well.
But it’s a try… Do you think it’s even better than the original?

Sometimes just turn it B&W and you forget all your color problems.
As much as I love Color (above BW) you can’t let it detract from the picture, sometimes.

—

Just goes to show in these edits… that sometimes small changes might not look like much… but they can make a big difference. Other times you can do some big edits (fast) and what they most serve to do is to change the Mood of the image.

Many of the changes a photographer can make will only show up in larger images… PRINTS.

Pimped out England Pictures #2

Bring out the focus of the picture and the strong features.
Cut out the distractions.

I decided the chair and the clouds were awesome. So I brought out the clouds a bit more.
And I lightened the area around the bench slightly.

I cut down on the grass a bit and cut out the path in the bottom left (easier seen on larger pictures)

The Original

IMAGE #2

A bit more contrast… bring out the skies a bit.
Make so the center statue isn’t dark and hard to decipher.

A more “Artsy approach.
I also tried to cut down on the bottom fence posts that were kinda annoying.
This time I kinda scrapped the clouds and did a noticeable vignette.
Lots more contrast.

 

The Original

 

FYI:

When sending me pictures… send the large files.

1. I can edit them better.
2. I’ll send back the edited files… so what you send is what you’ll get (in quality)
3. If you send a picture too small to print… you’ll have an edited picture you can’t print either.