What can I do to make these better??

[crystalclear]

I by no means get paid to take pictures or anything like that. I was just playing around and getting practice with a friends daughter for her birthday. Here are a few pictures from the day and I was wondering what I can do to make these better. The coloring just seems off to me...How do I make them "warmer" I guess is what I am saying. They seem a little cool....it may just be me, but I would really like your help and ideas. I don't have photoshop but I did download GIMP. I don't know how to use it yet...any advice how to fix these in gimp would be much appreciated. Thank you for your input.

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[480sparky68 67]

Your white balance setting is off. Your camera is set for Fine Weather, and should have been set for Shade.

Try loading them into GIMP, then choosing Colors > Levels > All Channels and see what Auto will do.

 

[crystalclear]

I will try that. Thanks so much.

 

[480sparky68 67]

If Auto doesn't work, try the three eyedroppers to the right of it. One is to pick a black point, one is for gray and the third for white. Sometimes they're way off, and sometimes they can nail it.

BTW, the first thing to do whenever editing anything in GIMP is to press CTRL-D. This creates a duplicate image. Then immediately close the original image. Now, any changes you make to the duplicate will never be able to affect the original (unless you foolishly and intentionally save it as the original file fame & directory path).

 

[dxqcanada5]

I will not tell you about post processing ... just some things for the next time:

As Sparky said ... white balance setting in camera.
Shaded area on a sunny day ? You will get the light reflection off of the blue sky ... the sky makes for a nice reflector.
Always be aware of your light source.

Focus ... these appear out of focus, or your lens is very soft wide open ... or a combination of the two.
Always make sure that eyes are in focus. Try to set aperture smaller (higher number) than that widest, which tends to be the poorest on most lenses.

 

[KmH]

That light reflected from the blue sky has a blue color cast, which has to be accounted for when setting the white balance, be it account for in the camera or in post processing.