Family Pictures

Every edit I did with this one was adorable.  I love how close up Jody got.  I have one cute baby!

This one is a little washed out.  I had to really tone down the glow so that Jordyn did not blend into my white shirt.  The weird thing is that it is one of the best when printed.  It looks totally different.  I have found that with a lot of the prints I have gotten, they look a lot different than on the computer.

My favorite with the glow.  I also love the angle Jody took this picture from.

This one is my least favorite with the glow.  I feel like there is too much of a contrast in the bright and dark areas of our faces.

Jody took these for us at our goodbye bbq.  They were taken in our backyard, well I guess it was mostly on our neighbors side of the fence.  I had planned on just sitting on the ground and at the last second saw this cute bench in my neighbors yard and asked if we could use it.  Jody took a ton of pictures with my camera and she was great!  I edited these.  I did pretty much the same thing with all of them.  I manually adjusted brightness, contrast, and color enhancement.  I found that I had take out some color tones or else they all had more of a yellow hue than the green/blue I was going for.  I found a new button on photoshop called "diffuse" or something like that.  It makes everything glow a little.  I have been looking for a way to get this glow forever!  I think I finally have it figured out!  I did the glow to all of these, but at a really low intensity so the pictures did not blind me.  I also straightened them cause it bugged me when the posts on the bench were a little askue (sp)!

Summertime Fun!

Kelsey ane I went to the park and took some pictures.  I took a lot and edited a lot, but here are some of my favorites!

Before.  I don't so much like the church in the background here.

I think this one is pretty bad.  But I posted it so I can remember not to go overboard with the color enhancement.  It looked fine at first, but when I came back to it later, it almost blinded me. 

before

after.  cropped.  auto lighten.  auto brightness and contrast then made it more bright to make it appear to be more of a sunny day.  it was actually a really cloudy day.

before

after.  cropped out the ugly cement box on the right side.  manual adjust contrast.  auto enhance colors.

before.  love jordyn's "seriously, more pictures" look.

after.  auto lighten.  manual contrast (up) and brighten again thinking it made it look like a sunny day. auto enhance colors.

before.  i took this picture thinking I could make it look old with this wall in the background. One thing I don't like is the pipe on the right side.  I feel like it is just in a spot that attracts the eye, but I could not crop it and still keep in enough of the old wall background to be satisfied.

first made black and white.  auto enhance colors and lighten (don't remember if this really made a difference cause it was already b/w). select jordyn, and inverse. lighten background (again. might not have made a difference cause i then did a spotlight.) lighting effects, omni flashlight and really tone down the intensity.

I think that by selecting Jordyn and lightening everything else, it kind of makes her look like a cut and paste kind of a deal.  So on the next one, I did pretty much the exact same thing as this one, only I lightened the whole thing, including her, and I think it turned out better.  Also, took the picture from a different angle to get rid of that pipe. 

before

after

before.  love her little smile in this one. 

cropped out the weird green box on the right.  tried to get her more into the center.  auto lighten.  auto enhance color.  manually brighten.

before.  this is her new "cheese" face.  I have been wanting to try some new angles and this from above angle is what I have had stuck in my head.  I think it really makes the picture about her, and not the scenery.

after.  auto lighten.  auto color.  manually brighten.

I have been playing a lot with photoshop the past little while.  I think I have really explored color and light and I am starting to get into routines.  I think I really need to work on getting brave.  Taking unconventional shots.  Not just setting Jordyn on the grass and snapping something.  I am glad I took this from above shot and that it worked out ok.  I need to get braver and more artistic with the editing in terms of color and brightness.  I need to take more pictures that focus on the face, and not the scenery.  Hopefully I can start to break out of my shell and do these things.  I am going to take some new pictures of my newborn nephew and some of my brother's family this summer and I hope that I can be brave and creative, thinking outside of just sitting and posing.

Jordyn and Hazel

My  mom got Jordyn and Hazel these cute matching denim dresses fot Christmas, and by Easter they fit and the girls were ready for their pictures.  I had only had my camera a couple weeks when I took these and it took me a while to figure out the settings and everything.  Indoor is a lot harder than outdoor for me.  Because it took me so long to adjust the settings and get it all figured out, the girls started to get ornery and there were no smiles for the camera.  Oh well, the outfits were the important thing ;)

This one is my favorite.  I did auto with all the brightness and color stuff.  I put a little omni spotlight to make the girls stand out a little.  I might have made it a little too bright on the white closet behind them. 

I did auto on all the color and lighting.  Added omni spotlight like I had in the first one.  The thing I corrected the most on this one was to straighten out the picture, which was my first time using this tool in photoshop.  I also corrected the distortion to try and make Hazel not look so far forward, but I think I could have done this even more drastically.

Again, auto with color and brightness.  Straightened the photo and played around with the distortion.  Added the mild omni spotlight.

before editing

before editing

before editing

@ Grandma Barton's

We started taking pictures with the kids sitting on the front porch.  But the green fields with the yellow dandilions, purple flower weeds, the bright red tractor, the shortly-after-rain blue sky, and the white barn way in the background were just to picturesque not to take in.

Before editing.  When taking this picture, I had the camera set on a high aperture nubmer (or maybe that means it is a low number.  I can't rememer but it opens the shutter up really wide to let in a lot of light.)  I think I had this setting for most of the pictures in this series.

After editing.  I am proud of this one.  I did auto on the light and exposure and manually enhanced the color.  I found a new lighting effect button on the full edit menu. I adjusted the lighting so it was coming from the bottom, lower intensity and wide focus. 

Guess I forgot to upload the bofore for this one.  I had to lighten the picture quite a bit.  I realized it is different to photograph a dark boy like Tate, especially whe the light source is behind him.  I also manually enhanced the color.

Before editing.  I actually thing this one is pretty good as is.  I should go back and enhance the colors to bring out the greens of the trees, blues of the sky, and the orange of the tractor.

After editing.  I might like the original of this one better.  Auto lighten and exposure.  Manually set the saturation to low in the enhance color menu.  Played with the lighting effects and had the source from the top left corner.  I think this one is too washed out.

Before editng.  I like the green grass, red tractor, and blue sky here.  Good colors.

Auto lighten and exposure.  Manually set the saturation to low in the enhance color menu.  Played with the lighting effects and had the source from the top left corner.  This one is not as washed out as the other I think cause it had more color to start with.  I wish Jordyn stood out a little more.

Just proof that getting 6 kids to look at the camera at the same time is impossible.  I took 78 pictures this day and did not get one with all the kids looking at the camera.

Before editng.

After editing.  Auto brightness.  Manually darken darks and lighten lights.  Love how blue the sky came out in this one and I could not get it to come out like this in any of the others.

Before

After. Change coloring to sepia.  Played with lighting effects again, this time having the light in the center.  I wish that Brigham was more of a focus here.  I think the tractor overpowers him.  But I do love the simplicity of it.

Casey's Kids

I am starting to get into a system when it comes to editing pictures with this fabric background I keep using.   I adjust color and brightness on the quided menu, usually using just auto.  Then I went back into the full edits and turn it black and white with a soft overlay.  I kind of feel ike it really turned him pale, but I like how it enhanced his messy cheeto face.  Such a little boy!

I like the round cheeks here and the little nose profile with the long eyelashes.  I did the same editing here as the one above, except I flipped it so it did not look exactly the same as the one above.  I think it is weird how much worse the shadows are in this one.  I wish I remembered what settings I had my camera on.

This is probably the best picture I have ever edited.  I am really proud of it.  I selected her bright blue eyes, then did an inverse.  I turned everything else brown, then b/w, then brown again with an overlay.  I also played with brightness and contrast.  It really made her blue eyes pop.  I did not edit the eye color at all.

Honestly don't remember what I did with this one.  I know I cropped it quite a bit.  I think I did some brown tinting with a soft overlay.  And obviously, the text in the corner.

I got to watch Casey's two adorable kids one evening and took an opportunity to take pictures of someone besides Jordyn.  Again, I took these in Jordyn's room, actually the same night I took those of Jordyn in the coral dress.  I really have to play around with colors, exposure, and do some creative/odd things with brightness, contrast and tints when I take pictures indoors.  Again, I cannot believe how much easier it is outside.

First Try..

I actually took these before I took the Easter Basket set.  The ones in the tub were taken in my basement and I was so frustrated I only took a few.  These were the first pictures I took with my new Nikon and I quickly realized I had a lot of reading to do before I could just jump in and start taking pictures.  I did not do much editing to these cause I thought, and still think, they are just a lost cause.  I hated the lighting, the harsh shadows, and all in all, I was unhappy with the whole situation.  I did the same thing to all three, brightened them up, and cropped so her face and not the yucky backdrop and shadows were the focus.

I gotta figure out how to edit out the drool!

I like her little ski jump nose in this one.

This set is one that I did in Jordyn's bedroom.  The walls in her room are painted a bright yellow and it makes for weird colors in photos, and in her room in general. (I was always going to repaint and tone down that yellow, but I was super pregnant and never got around to it.)  I did a lot of shots with her and the easter basket, but never edited them.  The outside ones just turned out so much better.  I have posted the original photo and then a few different edits.

The original.  Things I don't like:  harsh colors (too much bright is bad, a few bright pops is good), the egg, the way her white bow looks gray, her back foot looks purple.  Things I like: the whole composition, i did not feel like I needed to crop, she was actually looking at the camera.  

This one is a faded version.  I sucked out a lot of the color by playing with the hue/saturation.  I tried to do it again and could not figure out how I did it the first time.  Look how it makes the bow look white!

This one is a fade out from the center.  It gives a hint of the bright colors in the photo without having them so overpowering.  I only wish I knew if it was possible to adjust where the center of the color is and I would move it around her face.  I have a lot to learn in photoshop.

Black and white is always a good option for crazy colors.

This one is my favorite.  I selected her and the egg (stupid egg!) and then did a inverse select to get everything else.  I then did a black and white.  The only problem I have with it is that you can still see little reflections the yellow around her face.  I love how bright it makes her dress though.