TTQ B4U Posted May 25, 2009 Report Share Posted May 25, 2009 (edited) It's late so this won't be perfect, but I wanted to share some insight on the use of bad photographs. Something I hear a lot about since I do a lot of photo restoration and editing work that people are often disappointed about a number of photographs that they have taken that just didn't quite hit home and they don't know what to do with them. Well, don't toss them or delete them all. Knowing which ones are worth keeping and tossing is sometimes difficult, but if you sense the image has potential, it just might. I have better examples I'm sure, but these are two real quick ones I had handy from our day today. Both were taken by my 6yr old son and a very inexpensive <$100 digital camera he has. Both were pretty much full losses in terms of standard color snapshots. However, with just a few minor tweaks, both are now usable and print just fine. Even slight amounts of blur won't be noticeable on prints up to 5x7 or even 8x10 in size. Just remember that even silly simple snapshots from the family camera can be made family keepers even if they are less than perfect. Happy Shooting! http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/image/113025880/original.jpg http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/image/112927774/original.jpg Edited May 27, 2009 by TTQ B4U Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgtschulze Posted May 25, 2009 Report Share Posted May 25, 2009 I'm going to be honest and say that the first pic is actually worse. The second one diminishes the focus issue and is decent. I think the first one could have used some added light in post processing to throw some extra contrast on her face that was obviously not thrown from the flash on the camera. Just my $.02 Honestly, With digital.....just shoot...shoot...shoot. You are bound to capture something worth keeping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTQ B4U Posted May 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 25, 2009 I'm going to be honest and say that the first pic is actually worse. The second one diminishes the focus issue and is decent. I think the first one could have used some added light in post processing to throw some extra contrast on her face that was obviously not thrown from the flash on the camera. Honestly, With digital.....just shoot...shoot...shoot. You are bound to capture something worth keeping. Thanks for viewing and the opinion. You're right in that the first pic isn't a style that everyone will like. However, I tend to lean towards the antique sepia look and here I feel it works for a couple reasons. The first is the camera and lighting. Unfortunately with no fill flash combined with an inexpensive P&S and it's limited dynamic range, even post process lifting of shadows doesn't do much for the overall IQ. Thus I mixed it up and changed it. Composition wise, considering it was my 6yr old, he wasn't paying attention to the background nor her sitting position which I had to crop the original because of too, blowing out the background and adding vingette masked those to points. Again, the end result is different, but otherwise, it would just have been an attempt to correct a poor image. The second one was fun because for some reason my son really saw something in her look and wanted the photo. Rather than trash a completely OOF image, he wanted to push it and pull something together that was on the edge. I give him credit for thinking outside the box and trying to get creative to save it. Afterall, that's why it's called Creative Suite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaSSon Posted June 2, 2009 Report Share Posted June 2, 2009 What process did you use to sharpen the dog photo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTQ B4U Posted June 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2009 What process did you use to sharpen the dog photo? IIRC I sharpened this on in lab mode. I use a variety of techniques depending on the image. Just convert the image to Lab Color mode (Image/Mode/Lab color) and than selected the Lightness channel in the Channels palette and applied the same Unsharp mask filter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slimpsy1647545505 Posted June 2, 2009 Report Share Posted June 2, 2009 Good tip Tim! =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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