Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A Couple Photo Quick Fixes

Hey! Dawn here, bringing you today's post. After a few days of gray skies and lots of rain, the sun is out in my neck of the woods! Now if it would just get a little warmer I would be blissfully happy! I am so impatient for summer to get here, but as my daughter reminded me the other day, it is just April. And around here, that means about another month or two of some warmer days and some not so warm, lol. But, at least we have been above freezing for a few weeks now.

I have been taking a photo a day for project 365, and as much as I try, sometimes the pictures just don't seem to come out the way I want them to. So, today I thought I would pass along a couple quick fixes that I have learned, to help make those photos just a bit better. The biggest problem I have seems to be under-exposing my photos. Or at least on yucky gray days, they seem to be a little dark and blah. Take this one I took the other day. I wanted to capture the green that was suddenly popping out around me. But darn if this photo lacked that pop of color I could see when I looked out the window!

PSE to the rescue! Any program will work that uses blending modes. I opened the photo and then made a duplicate so I wasn't working on my original. Then in the layers pallet I duplicated the layer (the photo), then I went into my blend modes and clicked on screen. WOW! What a difference and I could now see all that beautiful green! If it still needs a little more, just duplicate that layer and play with the opacity until it looks good to you. Once you have it how you want, flatten the image and you are set to go! Just look at the difference here!


The other problem I have although not so often is overexposed photos. Sometimes that is ok and I use them anyway because I like to blend them into my background paper. But if you want to fix that, here is how you do it. It is just the same as above, except instead of using the screen mode, you use the multiply mode. Again, duplicating and adjusting opacity until you get it how you want. Then just flatten and save. Here is the before and after of my photo.


Now you are all set to go and start using those now beautiful photos on your layouts! Have fun and be sure and let me know how this works for you! I would love to see your fixed photos. Have a great week!

2 comments:

Digi Designz (Alicia) said...

awesome information! thanks for sharing :)

schneeflocke said...

I agree, it's great what you can alter using the blending modes, great job