Post Processing Software for a Non-professional

[jowensphoto]

Here's a run of that second through PS


I tried to dial the eyes down a bit, they were too unnatural looking. The skin has been every so slightly smoothed and attempted to clone out that blue spot, but my cloning skills leave something to be desired.

 

[jowensphoto]

and because I'm bored ...

 

[ph0enix]

and because I'm bored ...View attachment 27007

Great edits in both cases! Too bad the WB is way off (not fixable) in this one.
My eyes are more drawn to the leaves than the baby in the other shot unfortunately.

 

[jowensphoto]

and because I'm bored ...View attachment 27007

Great edits in both cases! Too bad the WB is way off (not fixable) in this one.
My eyes are more drawn to the leaves than the baby in the other shot unfortunately.

Thank you!!! Yep, WB can be SO difficult with fair-completed babies. My daughter is about a ghostly as they come... photographing her is challenging. A tip (can't remember where I learned/read it) is to wear a white shirt when photographing them and make sure you have as much pure white in the surroundings as possible. Their skin reflects absolutely every tint around them. OCF helps too!

 

[thetrue]

Thank you!!! Yep, WB can be SO difficult with fair-completed babies. My daughter is about a ghostly as they come... photographing her is challenging. A tip (can't remember where I learned/read it) is to wear a white shirt when photographing them and make sure you have as much pure white in the surroundings as possible. Their skin reflects absolutely every tint around them. OCF helps too!

Valuable information here. My wife's friend is letting me use her baby for practicing, and he is quite Casper-like Thanks for sharing that!

 

[runnergirl]

Jowens: thank you for your input! I know I have a long way to go to be a good photographer, and all the tips help. Even though my white balance is un- fixable I really like how much better you made these photos look! I'm guessing you used photoshop?

 

[The_Traveler]

I would just try undoing what was done a bit wrong.
I thiunk it is overexposed and the thin skin is just made transparent by the light so I lowered the exposure.
The red capillaries showed a lot so I decreased the red saturation and made it a bit lighter
It looked a bit cold so I warmed it a bit with a photofilter.
The skin mottling looked a lot like color noise so I denoised it with Noiseware, but retained the sharpness.
Added a tiny bit of brightness and contrast for a decent result.

 

[jowensphoto]

I would just try undoing what was done a bit wrong.
I thiunk it is overexposed and the thin skin is just made transparent by the light so I lowered the exposure.
The red capillaries showed a lot so I decreased the red saturation and made it a bit lighter
It looked a bit cold so I warmed it a bit with a photofilter.
The skin mottling looked a lot like color noise so I denoised it with Noiseware, but retained the sharpness.
Added a tiny bit of brightness and contrast for a decent result.

View attachment 27022

I can dig this, love how warm it is without being glaringly so.

 

[NorthbyNorthwest]

Like others have mentioned, I think Aperture from the Apple App store is a great go-between for the budding photographer looking to do some editing. There are some free options, but Aperture makes it a very seamless process. Iphoto's adjustments are laughable (because they want you get aperture), and you will see a huge difference in what you can do with a picture. Also, Aperture will automatically sync to your iphoto so anything you enhance will show up next time you open iPhoto which is handy if that is the program you are used to. While I don't know much about GIMP or any of the Photoshop variants, I can tell you that I am one very happy Aperture user. I suggest the free trial like others have mentioned, and if you like it $80 bucks is a heck of a deal for editing software. It should suit your needs for years unless you get into some real heavy lifting in your editing.

 

[runnergirl]

The traveler: I love what you did! It really fixed some of the bad mistakes I made.

North by NW: thank you so much for the aperture rec. I'm really a Mac fan and hopefully it is as easy to figure out as most apple stuff. I will def try the free trial and $80 is worth the investment if I like it.

 

[ronlane]

On Amazon this week LR4 has been less than $104 for download. I jumped on that as my free trial ran out.

Photoshop Lightroom is $149. It's a great program, much like Aperture. For image manipulation I would recommend GIMP (free) instead of Photoshop for a beginner... because it's free.

 

[andrewochs615]

Mind my piggybacking onto this thread, but does anyone use Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. I have Lightroom 4 and am wondering is Photoshop Elements worth getting?

 

[KmH]

Mind my piggybacking onto this thread, but does anyone use Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. I have Lightroom 4 and am wondering is Photoshop Elements worth getting?

Yes, a lot of people use Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Elements.

Adobe designed Lightroom with the intent it would be a supplement to Elements or CSx, not a replacement.

 

[The_Traveler]

The traveler: I love what you did! It really fixed some of the bad mistakes I made.

No problem.
It's nice to work on pictures of pretty children that are basically well done but just need a couple of tweaks to improve.
I wanted to get a little more glow but couldn't. Will try some more.
Thanks for marking your images as OK to edit.

 

[John27]

Another vote here for Lightroom. It is an EXCELLENT tool for a hobby photographer. Though photoshop and bridge can do it all, lightroom can do most of it much cheaper (along with the GiMP, free, for basic edits and cloning). For $100 (or less on sale) you get a way to catalog, batch process, convert (RAW to JPEG, useful for giving out CD's of pictures to friends and family), perform Adobe Camera RAW edits, crop, etc. etc. etc. etc. your pictures. It keeps them all organized, you can work fast, use presets for an entire set (For example, if you take 10 pictures in the exact same spot with the same lense, etc., you really only need to adjust the levels on one, then you can apply those changes to them all)

$100 for Lightroom + The GiMP is a winning combination. It's what I used for a long time. Later, if you decide you need it, you can get photoshop. My wife took a class in her last semester on Photoshop, so we got it cheap. Otherwise I probably wouldn't own it. I won't tell you that the free and cheap stuff can do what photoshop does, but I will tell you that the GiMP and lightroom can do almost everything a non-professional / hobby photographer needs.