~~ More editing fun ~~

Having more and more fun with editing. Ofcourse. For real real bad pictures there's not much *I* can do. Pro's maybe, but I'm just barely learning. And I like playing around with actions - by looking them up in the history or if youre even more ambitious, toggle the dialoguethingie on so you can see exactly every little adjustment and how it is done and even change them along the way to adjust them to your own pictures and at the same time learn more. It's somewhat boring though if you have a buncha pictures to edit so usually it's better off off & just readjust in the history in the end kinda before merging the layers. :p
(and yeah - the optimal would be to have the correct/desired exposure when shooting pics but often sometimes it'll be off when youre using manual settings & following your kids in&out the shadows in a sunny day..like this..)

Anyways.

Original picture, taken in the shadows:

Original picture

Alright - adjusting curves only (did I mention how much I like how Adobe boosted this tool in CS3?). And some unsharp mask. Ignoring the somewhat overexposed area at the upper part of the picture (which could be fixed *if* I wanted to by using two layers of the same pic and adjusting the curves of one layer and then using the eraser with say, half opacity and erasing the dark part of the dark layer then merging both part kinda I think but that'll be too much hazzle and I'm getting a headache thinking about it already ;p) Besides. I like overexposed pictures. Have I mentioned? When taking pictures I usually overexpose them one or two steps intentionally. Sure yell at me, tell me it's wrong, it's not textbook blah blah blah but it's MY pictures so nyah!

Adjusting curves only

Alright. Now that I'm happy about the picture it's about time to use an action to add a lil piazzah to it. In this case I wanted it more vivid and bright. (ofcourse..just dupe the layer and put it to hard layer or something else and adjust the opacity and eventually do another layer in screenmode but I often find I like the subtle and more pro hands of the actions much better for now)
So. This is what I kinda got when running it with minimal (none I think) individual adjustments. Too vivid and IMO somewhat fake.

Playing with the Itty Bitty action

So after some adjustments of the layers and even removal of some this is what I ended up with. Yeah. Me like.

The actioned picture after some adjustments. And the one I'll most likely use ;)

Now. What can we learn from this?
Well. Before using actions your best bet is usually to try and make the picture as "normal" as it can get. Once in a while actions can save your bad bad pictures (usually after heavy individual adjusting from you aka more work for you). However, it's much easier for the action to do so if the pictures already been fixed somewhat. Well. I think so anyways - but heaven knows I'm no expert so they (the experts that is, duh) might say I'm just wrong. Ohwell. Just sharing some observations I make while trying to learn :) Hm. Bedtime. Will stop bore/confuse you now :p

Jaja. Jeg er mer og mer into redigering for tiden gitt. Men altså; jeg har stilt dette spørsmålet før og stiller det igjen; er dette virkelig helt "ok"? Min kjære tok et kjapt blikk på redigeringa mi og lurte på om dette ikke var litt juks. Hmmm. Hva synes dere? Juks eller helt ok? Burde jeg ha stoppet ved justeringen av curves (bilde nr 2) - der bildet ser helt "normal" ut?? Eller er det helt greit å redigere det slik at bildet endte sånn som det gjorde for nå -- siste bilde - litt mer intens men ikke så voldsomt som bilde nr 3. What do you think? Personlig synes jeg det er gledelig at det faktisk går an å redde dårlige bilder, og i noen tilfeller, faktisk få de til å bli brukbare. Og hvorfor ikke prøve å gjøre de litt mer lekre? Eller er det virkelig juks. Hm. Ikke mer juks enn å bruke sort-hvitt bilder da? Eller sepia? Eller en eller annen sort-hvit "tone"?? Åh har jeg nevnt..sort-hvitkonverteringen i CS3 er digg! Oh yes. I'm in love. :)

Jaja. Lalletid tenker jeg. Får scrappe dette bildet imorgen nå som det er klart og brukbart ;)

Ps. Fortsatt tid å bli med på RAK'en! Om du faktisk har det stempelsettet fra før så er det helt ok..jeg er bare veldig nysgjerrig på historiene deres....så gøy å lese de jeg har fått til nå :) Scroll litt nedover bare :)
, ,