Week 2 - Editing Photos

It's week 2 of Launchpad A at http://www.myjanee.com/.This week has been all about working with photos. In this lesson we looked at:
1). Fixing Levels using a photo that is too dark or too light that has poor contrast.
2). Curves - fixing a photo with poor contrast.
3). Colour Cast - fixing a photo that has yellowed with age or has a cast due to artificial lighting conditions.
The quick photo fixes are Auto Levels, Contrast and Colour. These may not work on all photos but you might be lucky like I was with this picture taken in the Autumn of 1976. Using just the Auto Colour on this has had a very dramatic affect on altering the colour.

Menu adjustments include Levels, Curves, Colour balance.
I used levels on the photo of my son below, it was taken in a museum on the Costa Brava, Spain. I was very disapointed at the time that the old cars and bikes in the background were so dark in the origional photo, using levels has brightened the background enough to see more detail on the
vehicles.

This picture below is of me with my father, I used a combination of Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Colour to achieve the results in the after picture.



Variations is another method of working with a picture with colour cast, here you get to see the affect of different changes and pick one with the best outcome.To improve the picture below I also used Auto Colour and Levels after tweeking with Variations.



The photo below of Patrick Senior and Patrick Junior was improved using a combination of Curves and Levels. The effect is to brighten a picture that looked pretty dull to begin with.

This week has been lots of fun and I've learned quite a lot about trying to rescue photos that would otherwise be deleted.