Is everybody using Photo Editing software ?

[mrpenguin]

I bought my first Digital SLR a couple of months ago .. Nikon D90
I took photos of somebody other than my 5 year old son for the first time ever the other day but was very disappointed with the results till I adjusted the Contrast.

Is it possible to take pictures that looks amazing without using any Photo Editing Software ?
What % of professional photos you see in magazines and books were not fixed or made better by software ?

1 --This is the untouched pic

2 --This is the edited pic

 

[Robin Usagani]

Most of them are touched.. at least adjusting the RAW a little bit. If I have your permission, I would like to edit this photo a bit.

 

[peanut170]

i think the edited one looks funny myself. real orange to me. I think if u want to take portrait type shots like that you mite need more lights than anything.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

The first looks better than the edit.
Try not to be so heavy handed with it.

 

[mrpenguin]

Yes, go ahead and edit
It is very orange yes because I tried to give it a bit of color
This pic was taken at night with a flash and I found that they came out very bad so I turned the lights off in the room and pointed the flash almost completely away from her to not get any harsh light on her

I need to learn a lot when it comes to flash photofraphy

 

[DJH]

What are you using for editing?

The first picture looks better than the edited one by the way. You went way too heavy on the effect. It also appears that you altered the saturation or something else because there is a red/orange colorcast to the altered pic.

 

[mrpenguin]

I was using GIMP but just recently put Photoshop 7 on my computer

 

[kundalini]

Just from a WB and color balance sense, the first looks better.

Subtlety is a watchword.

There are a few others such as amputation of limbs, distractions in the background (receptacle taken out in edit) color balance / White Balance, RoT, general posing, general framing.

Not the best in this instance, but much can be learned. Are you receptive?

 

[mrpenguin]

Yes go ahead and tell me what you think, I am completely new to this.
Would love to take classes but have no time at all for that

 

[reznap]

 

[kundalini]

Sorry reznap, but you have obliviated her seating. :thumbdown:

 

[rallysman]

Reznap's edit is much more appealing than the first 2. Nice work.

 

[mrpenguin]

Cool, how did you get the background so white ?

 

[Robin Usagani]

NOt sure if i mess it up. The file is very low res.

 

[reznap]

Sorry reznap, but you have obliviated her seating. :thumbdown:

It was distracting. I left a few wrinkles here and there so it didn't look like she was floating, but it looked like a sheet on an armchair - doesn't add much to the pic.

I could have edited better but it's not my picture so I didn't spend more than 5 or so mins..

To the OP: Yes you could have had much better results and without editing software. As peanut said, the lighting needs improvement.

Cool, how did you get the background so white ?

Masked it off, in this case with the help of a program called Viveza 2. It's a photoshop plugin.