On Monday, I posted this sweet captured moment of my husband and daughter reading together. Although precious, straight out of the camera (with no editing), it’s a little underexposed and warm for my taste. So I couldn’t wait to get in and make some changes to it.
My first step was to open it in Adobe Camera Raw and make some adjustments to exposure, recovery, blacks, brightness and contrast. I then opened the photo in Elements 9 and ran a levels adjustment, bringing in the outer sliders just a tad. I decided to run a second levels adjustment layer but only moved the middle slider to the left a bit to brighten. Because I only wanted to brighten the faces in this adjustment, I inverted the layer and used a soft brush to go over the faces. I should’ve probably stopped here with my edit but I decided to run a color pop action in hopes of brightening the photo even more. Finally I ran a high pass filter to sharpen the photo. Initially I had planned to share this next photo as my final edit, but as I looked at it more, I decided the edit was much too harsh and didn’t really convey the sweetness of the moment. I went back and forth as to whether I was even going to share this particular edit, because the more I look at it the more I dislike it. However, I think sometimes it’s good to see examples of an edit gone too far … it reminds me to keep it simple!
So it was back to the drawing board. Since I knew the emotion that I wanted to convey with this picture was soft, I decided to go to the Pioneer Woman's actions for Elements. Her actions were the first ones I downloaded when I first started learning how to edit in Elements. They were free and I loved how I could easily achieve a different look with the click of a button. Easy!
I first applied the Cool This action from her Set II and then ran the Lovely action from Set I. This particular action gives you both a lighten layer and a darken layer so I used the lighten layer (with a soft white brush) to lighten the faces slightly.
Ahhh…much better! I love the dreamy feel of this particular edit and I feel that the edit conveys the soft emotion of this shot so much better than the one above.
Finally, I thought it would be fun to play with a black and white edit so I went back to the Pioneer Woman's actions. I, again, ran the Cool This action and lowered the opacity some before running her BW Beauty action. I lowered the opacity on the bump layer to 50% before running a high pass filter for a little sharpening. Finally I used the PW Edge Burn action with a low opacity to give a slight vignette around the edges.
This week I was reminded of two things … keep my edits simple and make sure my edit accurately reflects the emotion of the picture. I hope you enjoyed reading about my editing process this week. Thanks so much for stopping by! And for those of you who leave comments and feedback … thank you so much! I love hearing from you! Have a super weekend!
**If you want to see more edits, visit Ashley at Ramblings and Photos!
Oh yes - I really love your dreamy edit and I love how you're recognizing when you've gone too far. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteFrame that black and white one ASAP!!! Love the dreamy look of your third and 4th photo and thank you for sharing an example of an edit taken too far! I have a few of those....but they are great to learn from :)
ReplyDeleteThe black and white edit is perfect! So many options and I find knowing the right way to go takes a lot more trial and error on my part than actual skill on my part so far. Very helpful to read someone else's thought process to a beautiful edit.
ReplyDeleteOh that happens to me all the time. Unfortunately I tend to notice it when I am finally getting to putting the post together & then I don't have time to re-do it. :) I think I may have many this week where I have gone too far- but I am going to just learn to let it go & remember to not do it again in the future.
ReplyDeleteThese really came out great & I love the tender moment.