With all the affordable digital cameras available now you can take good pictures! There are also many free editing programs. Even though I use photoshop and Lightroom 2 for most of my editing, today I am going to try out some free editing and offer up a few hints on making your photos better.
Two programs I want to mention are Flickr's Picnik and Goggle's Picasa. Flickr offers free photo storage, organizing and sharing with many other free helpful features. You can pay a yearly fee for more storage (on flickr) and features (on Picnik). Picnik is an editing program through Flickr with many easy to use editing features. I will be using these to edit the above photo. Picassa is also a free storage and editing program with useful features to make your photos look a bit better. I don't think you should spend alot of money to begin with so try these first then as you progress you can move on to bigger editing programs. ;)
With all the available light, the beach is a fabulous place to take photos. When we went, it was early and slightly overcast so the lighting was even better. Photography basically means studying light.... or I like to say capturing light. ;) o remember you are studying and then capturing light and images when you shoot. I do like to get as good of a shot out of my camera as I can but sometimes ~ especially with children and animals ~ you have to shoot on the move!
Here is a before photo above: I like shooting things at an angle. It always adds interest to the photo. I also like to shoot close ( which can be a fault for me at times). I shoot either in manual (never auto) or Aperture Priority so I can control the light. This photo was shot with a Nikon D300 and 50mm lens with an aperture f3.2, exposure +0.83 at 1/3200 with an ISO of 200.
Now I know you thinking "I could shoot this!" Well, you are right. You can. Pookie (nickname) was running around and I was following her with a camera. I did however think this could be a really nice picture as I liked the look on her face and the movement the photo evokes. I am also into vintage and b/w as you may have noticed. The after photo was edited in Lightroom 2, but I am going to edit it in Picnik using the free options and see how close I can come to the LR2 version. Click on the photo and chose edit. This will take you to Picnik.
First I am going to crop this photo. (Go to crop)
I am now going to go to create and use the free black and white feature. I then slide down to the bottom left on red and 0% fade. Click OK. Now go to exposure 28 contrast 24 Advanced: highlights 33, shadows 9, brightness -4. click ok. Back to create Choose Sepia and move slider to bottom left and move until desired tone - I added just enough tint and 0% fade and clicked Apply. Next I went to vignette and chose size 57 strength 67 at 0% fade on black (far left bottom corner) then clicked apply. Now we have this:
We could do more with it under the premium features, but I am only using the free editing. Le's see if Picasa can do better. ;)
Choose Crop then crop and click Apply.
I then went to effects and chose saturate slightly moving the slider to the left. I then went to Tuning which offers fill light, highlight, shadow and color temperature. I brought the fill light and shadow down to about 1/4 of the way, the highlight slider not quite 3/4 of the way and just a bit to the positive on the color temperature slider. Back to effects and choose sepia. I didn't see any vignette option and Picasa seems more limited than Picnik but it is still free and easy to use. I tried both of these and it took just minutes to edit but if I had to choose one it would have to be Picnik.
Mess around with tilting your camera at different angles when you shoot, let the light in, try flickr's picnik and get that camera off automatic!
Patricia
