Photographic Flashback
June 9th, 2010 by WaltI was just looking at the remaining picture count on the memory card currently in my digital camera and had a flashback to the days of film when we had to ration our shots more than today. Electronic storage has sure changed things! As long as you don’t fill up your memory card/stick/whatever, you can snap away at tons of things and later review your photos and delete the ones that you don’t like.
I have more or less accidentally taken some super shots this way.
Looking back at the slides I took while stationed in Germany (over a thousand!), I remember grudging many super shots not knowing if it would turn out any good and many that I thought couldn’t miss – that did…..miss, that is.
Of course, being able to punch up the color or brightness (or reduce them) is a welcome feature I have taken for granted for a long time now!
One hint: if you want to punch the color or contrast a bit, use a program that lets you use layers. Simply copy a new layer right on top of the background layer (your bottom layer). Then using the top layer, really punch things up and then play with the transparency of that layer. You can punch up contrast or color saturation and still keep things looking natural.
Be sure to not overwrite the original file!!!!!! Copy the picture you want to work with to another directory and change its name. Do your work in the native editor file format (this keeps the layers and adjustments separate and does not compress the file as JPEG(jpg) is a lossy compression where you lose a bit of your picture each time you open and then re-save it) After you get it to where you like it, then Save-As a JPEG, keeping the working copy in case you want to tweak it later.
Use a different layer for each correction/effect you want. Play with putting one adjusted layer above or under the other (remember the background layer stays on the bottom; it won’t move) as this will affect the outcome. My favorite method for not over doing things is to bring it up to the point where any more is too much, while feeling that you might be able to get away with just a little more (but resisting the urge to add any more tweaking).
The best way to learn how to do things right is to do them wrong and learn what doesn’t work! I have found some of my favorite tweaks this way, just having to tone them down a bit.
Most importantly, have fun.
