Father’s Day Good-to-Wow Edit

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!

A Father’s Day themed Good-to-Wow Challenge

As soon as I took this picture over the weekend, I knew it would be perfect for Jill and Ashley's weekly challenge…


Technically speaking, there are some issues with this shot that I look forward to fixing in Thursday’s edit. However, I don’t think taking good pictures is always about being technically perfect. Sometimes, a picture can be lacking in areas such as lighting, focus and composition but still be completely perfect.

In my mind, this picture is perfect.

It captures a special (unstaged) moment between my husband and my daughter. It tells a story of how my husband has made a commitment to help Katelyn with her reading this summer by snuggling close and listening to her read aloud before bed. It shows a father investing in the life and heart of his daughter. It shows just what an incredible daddy my kids have.

I’m so thankful to have captured this priceless moment with my camera. Yep, it’s pictures like this that remind me why I love taking pictures so much!

Hope to see you back on Thursday when I share the edited version!

Bubbles Take II [Good-to-Wow Challenge]

It’s time to revisit the bubble pictures from earlier in the week.  Today I’m linking up with Ashley at Ramblings and Photos for the Good-to-Wow Challenge.  I chose three of my original shots to edit and share.  For those that are interested, my editing recipe is below…

I like to keep my editing relatively simple and clean.  My steps were basically the same for all three pictures with the exception of the first one in which I also used the clone tool to get rid of the background distractions and MCP's Eye Doctor action to make my son’s eyes pop just a little.

My Recipe:

1.  Open in ACR (File-Open As-Camera Raw) and make slight adjustments to Exposure, Recovery, Blacks, Brightness and Contrast as needed

2.  In PSE9, levels adjustment and High Pass Filter on Soft Light Blending Mode

3.  Everyday Elements FREE Florida action … this action is one of my favorites, especially for outdoor shots … it has layers that can be turned on or off based on the look you want

Note:  On the third shot, I also used MCP's Color Pop action which is part of the Complete Workflow set to give the bubbles a little more pop.

And that’s it!  It literally took me longer to get this post ready than it did to edit the pics!  Quick and easy!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Bubbles [week 22–Good-to-wow challenge]

Yesterday we pulled out the bubbles in hopes of capturing some great shots for the Good-to-wow challenge. After some 50+ shots and a failed attempt at creativity, I decided to share the following…

I have a specific idea for a cool shot and in my mind it looks perfect. In reality, I just couldn’t nail it yesterday. So I’m going to keep trying this week and am keeping my fingers crossed that the final shot will turn out as good as I envision it. We shall see!

Chalk Drawings–Before & After

Today I’m sharing my before & after chalk drawings shots as part of Ashley and Jill's Good to Wow photography link up.  I decided to keep the edits fairly simple by just making a few adjustments, adding a creative action and by editing them all with the same recipe.  I don’t always choose to use actions for my edits but every once in a while it’s fun to play!  What I love about the products I used for these edits, is that that were all free!

#1 – SOOC

#1 – After edit

#2 – SOOC

#2 – After edit

#3 – SOOC

#3 – After edit

My recipe:

*Open in ACR and make slight adjustments to recovery, blacks and contrast

*Open in PSE9 … levels adjustment layer (outside sliders in towards the middle just slightly); high pass filter for sharpening

*Apply MCP's FREE Mini Fusion action … this action set includes many layers that you can click on or off or adjust the opacity based your desired look.  I usually just play around with the layers until I get a look that I’m happy with.

That’s it!  Pretty easy!  Even though I was pretty happy with the shots SOOC, it was fun to play around in Elements to give them just a little extra pizzazz!

Thanks for stopping by!  Oh, and if you want to see more before and after shots, be sure to visit Ashley's Ramblings and Photos.

Chalk Drawings

My camera’s been pretty quiet over the past week. In fact as I was looking through my files, I realized I haven’t uploaded any new pictures in a week! There are a few on my camera but, in general, that’s very uncharacteristic of me. But I did find some really fun pictures from this spring that I hadn’t edited or shared so I think I’ll share some of those this week.

This first set shows one of my kid’s favorite outdoor activities … drawing with chalk on the driveway. Their most favorite thing to draw is a giant city complete with roads, signs and buildings. Then they take their bikes and pretend that they are living in that city. They pretend over and over again until a rain comes and washes it all away. And then they get to start all over again.

Since I’m linking up to Jill and Ashley's Good-to-Wow challenge this week, these shots are brought to you SOOC (straight out of the camera – with no editing). If you come back on Thursday I’ll repost them with some simple editing steps.

All three shots: ISO 200 … f/5.6 … 1/640 … 35 mm focal length … taken with 24-70mm 2.8L lens

Good to Wow [Green Edits]

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time to link-up my “green” edits at Ashley's Ramblings and Photos. I opted to just share three of the five shots from my original post on Monday since I tend to go through the same basic editing steps on all of my photos. Since I’m still relatively new to the photography world I’m admittedly still trying to find my groove. After much trial and error with my editing, I’ve learned to adopt the less is more philosophy. When I first started editing pictures I know there were many times when I way over did it, so my goal now is to just try to enhance. And of course there are those times when it’s fun to get really creative with actions and other editing techniques. For the following, however, I tried to keep it pretty simple.

I shoot in Manual Mode and RAW probably 99% of the time. I love the flexibility and extra control it gives me when I go to edit. And if I make a mistake with White Balance or exposure, I can usually correct the problem later.

I started in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) with all of the shots below. Although I did write down my specific changes, I think I’ll just say that the settings I typically like to tweak are: Exposure (to lighten or darken), Recovery (to recover some lost detail), Blacks (to give a little richness and depth), Contrast (to intensify the difference in lights and darks) and Clarity (to add crispness). I usually don’t adjust by much – just enough to add a little pizzazz! I think the amount by which you adjust the settings depend on the picture itself.

Once I’m done playing in ACR, I edit in Photoshop Elements 9. Someday maybe I’ll take the plunge into the world of the more powerful “real” Photoshop, but for now I’m perfectly content with what I can do in Elements.

In PSE 9, I almost always run a few adjustment layers first: Levels (move the outside sliders in towards the middle or towards the outer edges of the histogram mountain) and Brightness/Contrast in Soft Blending Mode (to give a little color pop) at a low-medium opacity. Occasionally I’ll also do a cooling/warming filter layer or a hue/saturation layer if need be. I tend to take the “try it and see” approach. If I don’t like the result, I can always undo it.

My final step, before trying anything creative like textures or actions, is to run a High Pass Filter for sharpening then do a “save as” and rename the file “clean.” From there I can decide whether I want to do anything else to it like add texture and play with the various actions that I have. The shots below were all left as “clean” edits. Since I love playing with textures on my photos, I may go back and try some at a later time. But for now, here are my before and afters:

Before (SOOC):

After: (Note: I did add a brown gradient map layer in soft light blending mode at 38% opacity as well)

Before on the left and after on the right:

Before on the left and after on the right: (I actually did very little to this one. I just liked it so much SOOC)

So that’s it! I’m certainly not an expert, but it’s been fun to share what I know and how I edit. Thanks for stopping by!

Good to Wow link-up [Theme: Green]

Today I’m linking up to the Good to Wow challenge at Jill Samter Photography. Each Monday her readers are encouraged to post SOOC (straight out of camera … no editing) shots. And then on Thursday I will post before and after editing shots at Ashley’s Ramblings and Photos site. I’ve been peeping in at both of these sites for a few months but have never participated in their link ups … until now! Since I’ve taken lots of “green” shots recently, I thought this was the perfect week to join the fun.

All of the following shots are SOOC: And all, with the exception of one, were taken with my 100mm 2.8L macro lens.

Come back by on Thursday to see my before and after edited shots!