Miss Fix-It

So yesterday I posted some pictures of my blog about Mr K -who(dagnabbit!) captured my sweet littlest Monkey's heart and attention.

Well, I posted those pictures straight out of the camera.

Which I should not have, but I did.

I know that there are these talented people who take the most amazing pictures in composition and with a trained and artistic eye, and then they get on Photoshop, and they can make that photo EXACTLY what they imagined in their minds as the shutter flew!
They are artists!

But poor, pitiful me! I do not have Photoshop any longer.
My free trial ran out.
And even during the trial, I had NO IDEA how to use it!

Would you like to see the fruit of my efforts?

The original:

Ok. Cute, sweet baby! But there is some work that needs to be done, she looks blue, and poor sweetie has some of that baby acne stuff going on.

So here is MY first attempt at Photoshopping the picture:
Do you see the difference?

Me neither. For everything I did, there did not seem to be any change at all.

Effort 2:

Do you see the difference now? No?

Not surprised. I can't find a difference either.

I think I am not very good at this.

So I called my OOBER-TALENTED sister
(who just so happens to have this whole photoshop thing down, you know) and the result took my breath away!
I have NO IDEA how she pulled it off! But all the baby acne is GONE, her skin is rosie and lovely, and her eyes are even more twinkly!

That is worth another look!
Beautiful!

Here is what she did in Black and White:
Lovely!

You can see the family pictures she took of my family and me HERE and HERE.


Now, I am inept at Photoshop, but there are a lot of things that you can fix with simple Windows Media.

So here is the photo of Mr K straight out of the camera as you saw it in THIS post:

Ok, we can see that there needs to be some work done. Here it is on my laptop.

My poor laptop sure gets a workout!

First head to the "Fix" at the top left-hand corner of the viewing screen.

Now, you all may wonder WHY I am walking you all through it! Well, I am guessing that there are people who read this blog who are just like me. And I, for all my intelligence (no comments from the peanut gallery!) had all this on my computer for THREE YEARS, and JUST realized THREE WEEKS ago that I could actually DO something with it!

So those of you who have gotten all this figured out, sit back and watch all the rest of us "Ooooh!" and "Ahhhh!" at the discovery. Just laugh where we can't hear you, OK?

I HEARD that!

Back to business.

Now a menu will drop down on the right.

It looks like this:

With Mr K's picture I decided to start with the "Auto Fix" option. Sometimes it makes the picture just perfect.


Here is the result:
AAACK! I think it made it worse!
Mr K looks like he has been holding his breath for WAY too long!

Back to the drawing board.

So first I pulled up the "Adjust Exposure" option:
I bumped up the contrast just slightly, and simply nudged the brightness down. Not shown in this picture, since I took it AFTER the fix, and I did not want to mess up what I had just done!

Next I picked the "Adjust Color" option:
Now, I went up in the color temperature, making the picture a little warmer. Mr K is actually that tanned and dark from being in the sun, so it was appropriate.

Next, I nudged (there is that word again) the saturation to the right. You really don't want too much of this one, but a little bit can keep a picture from being too washed out!

Here is the result!

Well? What do you think?


Before:

After:
I like that one much better!

See I CAN do this "fix-it" thing!

This is a really easy way to fix pictures without the expense of Photoshop and the training needed to be really effective at it! Now of you want to make this a profession, you are going to need much more than Windows Media, but for the shutterbug, this can really be a lifesaver for your favorites that need help, and give your pictures a new dimension.


I like this also because you can fix red eye:

When I found this particular feature I went through all my old pre "natural-light-love-affair" days and fixed them all!

And crop pictures too:

So, you can use this feature if you just cannot figure out how to make Photoshop work for you, or if you are cheap, married to someone who is cheap, or an expensive program like that is not in the budget for you. Make the best use of Windows Media, and you might be able to make your photos pop!

Just don't forget THIS amazing, and TERRIBLY important button!

Located in the bottom right-hand corner of your window, make this little puppy your friend.
Simply click repeatedly to undo multiple steps!

And then have some fun!

Age

What is your age?...


Oh! Excuse me! I was talking to my camera. I would never DREAM of asking a person their age without a really important reason -even though I hear that certain people (Julie) are celebrating the big 3-0 today!

Happy Birthday, twin! The other day I showed my kids a picture of me when I was in high school and asked them who it was. They cried in one voice, "Aunt Julie!!" So you should feel good to know that you look like I did in highschool! WAIT! That might be a bad thing. I meant it as a compliment! You look great! That is what I mean!

All kidding aside!

Anyhow, back to the subject. My camera is 7 years old, and in the years of digital cameras, that is ANCIENT! Dog years are 7 to 1, but digital camera years are about 50 to 1. So mine is 350 years old! Ha! Shutters (ha! I crack myself up!) pretty good for his age, huh?
Seriously! Cameras are being updated so quickly that every couple of years they become old news. In fact, now you can get a camera with DOUBLE the mega-pixels as mine for about $150. Not a GOOD one, mind you! But double the clarity. I won't even TELL you what mine cost -and we got it on a REALLY good sale! It was the state-of-the art best camera when we got it.

Yet, after having it for so long, I still have not figured out how to use it properly! I ask Sweet Geek, and he says that our camera does that, but that level of technical maneuvering is beyond me. I want a camera that follows verbal commands. "Stay in focus!" "No flash!" "Take the picture right!" This should save a lot of time since I already yell the command out anyway!

SO, I was trying to take a picture of an afghan that I crocheted (kro-shayd). (On a side note, my computer underlined crochet as an incorrectly spelled word! I thought I might have gotten it wrong so I looked at the choices. I just don't think that "an afghan I crotched would get across what I am trying to express. Do you?)

Ok, back to business. I was trying to take this picture of this afghan. More about the afghan later, but it had been rainy and cloudy here. And since I HATE flash photography, I was trying to use natural light and THIS is how it turned out:

Can you even tell what color it is? It looks brown or black, and I ASSURE you it is NOT!

So I tried again, this time with the lamp on:
You can see a tiny hint of red, but simply not the effect I was looking for! GOODNESS! IF a blanket is full-blown scarlett, it should look that way in a picture!

OK, open the blinds. That should let in a little more light.
Not enough!

Rumple it up a little more! Then maybe more light will get on the blanket, and illuminate it's beauty!


Again:
Don't you LOVE my bed?, but you still can't see the blanket!

One more try:
AAAAACK!

Ok, I'll HAVE to use the flash. I don't like flash photography. It look artificial and can make almost everything/anyone look uglier that it/he/she is.














GAAAAACK! Proven once again! Bleck!
Oh, my! That is truly ugly. If I posted THIS picture of one of my favorite things, everyone would wonder WHY ON EARTH this is one of my favorite things! Yuck!

Then I remembered this picture my Sweet Geek helped me take a few years ago:
This picture is terrible! It is fuzzy, the lighting is orange, and ALL THREE of my kids are making faces. BUT, he did something to the camera. He turned a little dial to a tiny, and crude picture of a woman's profile.
I cannot show you a picture of it because it is on my camera! And that would be something like licking the small of your own back!
At the time he told me that it was the portrait setting. And when snapping this photo, the reason it is fuzzy is because the shutter stayed open longer and I had not yet learned how to brace myself so I would not move while the shutter was open.
Now, I have a brother that likes to dabble in photography, and a sister who is an EXTREMELY talented professional photographer (she is having her big 3-0 today!). You can see some of her work HERE. So I have had some exposure (Haha! I crack myself up!) to some picture-taking technical jargon, and there was something about a longer shutter time letting more light in and creating a lighter picture?... or something like that. So first I tried to re-set the shutter time with the menu, and could not figure out how to do it! So I turned the dial to the little woman's profile, and THIS is what came out:

Oops! Not still enough. Let's try again.




So this is what I learned:
You can "shed some light" (hehe!) on a person or item that you are taking a picture of by setting the camera to have the shutter open longer! When your light is limited compensate with shutter time.
But when you do this, make sure that you use a tripod or brace yourself to be completely still while the shutter is open.
I also learned that the area that is in focus is VERY narrow. I don't know the technical terms (Maybe someone who knows could help me out on that one), but everything closer and everything further away is fuzzy. You have a very narrow depth that will be in focus.

I am going to play with this a little more, and can't wait to see how they turn out. I will keep you posted with a new post! Haha! I crack myself up!