Photo Editing- Colors and Contrast

Here are a couple of my photos, edited in Photoshop. I found a few things- one is that my eye likes black and white and I always think things look better that way. Also, in terms of color, I liked giving photos an old 80's tint to them- probably because some of my favorite family photos are in that tone. I always found that I really don't like things over-saturated or over-exposed. It was also helpful to use the masking layers in order to put effects on the original photo.

This is the original photo.

This is the final- I tweaked a lot of things in it. Mainly levels, brightness and contrast, saturation and a cool-toned filter.

I took this photo yesterday- sledding in the BC back country.

This is the edited version. I changed it to black and white, adjusted the levels and contrast and put a warm-toned filter on it.

Photo Editing Practice

So, for this assignment I realized a couple things. The first was that I have no patience when selecting things and that my expectations for poor Photoshop are far too high. I kept just wanting it to "know" what I wanted selected, and figured out after a while that using a variety of selection tools on one project can help quite a bit. Also, Lisa's and this Adobe TV tutorial on selecting really helped A LOT-

I found his trick of painting within a selection really helpful, especially when I was dealing with selecting fine points. My selections are definitely not perfect, but I plan on practicing a lot more in the future!

This is one of the images I started with, taken on the top of half dome in Yosemite.

I added a picture of a heli coming to pick us up...wouldn't that've been nice..I also tweaked the color balance, saturation, shadows and contrast to try to make the end result look a little more realistic.

This is the original picture that I used. I took it of myself in a plane in Alaska. Behind me is the Rainbow Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park.

This is the edited version. I cropped out the glacier and put in a photo from Hawaii and my boyfriend being weird. I also manipulated saturation and contrast.

Landscape

I really enjoyed learning about landscape this week and had a great opportunity to go practice my newly acquired skills. We had a beautiful powder day at Mount Baker and I got to capture the North Cascades in all their glory. I also threw in a couple favorite shots from Chile to add a little color to the collection.

This is an early morning shot of the lodge with the looming Mount Shuckson behind it.


This is an extra photo I threw in, taken in Chile this summer. The sunset was gorgeous but which can unfortunately can be credited to loads of pollution in the city below.




This is another extra from Chile that I like because to me, it really says "landscape". The cool thing about it is that it was taken through fiberglass out of helicopter.



This is the view from the tops of the ski resort last week. I feel like I've got a lot to learn about how to use the sun to your advantage when your shooting into it.



This is a little wind lip that my friends were playing around on. I liked the contrast provided by the shadows, forming a line down the middle of the photo.


Frozen alpine trees!


Here is a view of the Casacade mountain range with the clouds rolling in at the end of the day. I changed it to B&W in Picassa in order to give it a stormy mood and accentuate the contrast of the scene.


This was taken pretty early in the morning, our first hike out. I feel like I would've liked to change the angle a little, highlighting the tracks in the snow.