Do you use them on your layouts? What do you do when the only photos you have aren't the greatest to tell your story? Eg: blurry, out of focus, too dark etc.
Depends on the story. If it's the only one I have, I embrace the photo in all it's messy glory. I have a sharpening program that I'll run it through for that and noise to see if it helps. If it's truly unsalvagable, I toss it and tell the story anyway. I have some toddler photos that bad lighting (hi Massachusetts winters being surrounded by hills!) or the kid was running and I didn't have enough camera knowledge to get a better photo. Those I usually leave as is and add something about the photo reflecting real life. Blurry photos I sometimes mask into the background so the blur isn't as obvious, or the blur is part of the story, like this skating one or this one isn't as blurry, but wasn't great. Some of the basketball ones I leave as is. The game moves fast, I don't shoot as well as professionals. And that's okay. It still tells a story. Sometimes I leave the photos small. They look less blurry that way! And sometimes, if I have multiples, I'll use lots of photos on 1 page so the blurry one doesn't stick out as much. And when all else fails, black and white can help. You can lighten it a bit more than color and give it more of a contrast. Or pull it back from being too light.
Same as @bestcee - I'll usually edit the photo until it's okay. I think it's better to tell the story than to just not do anything with it.
I've used blurry photos sometimes to tell a story..if they were only photos I had. I kept photos small..and maybe clustered them.. and let the words shine
Keeping them small, converting to b/w, adding a clarity adjustment in editing, these can all help. But my go-to for less than perfect photos is to create inverted mask layers, selecting blend modes and brushing parts of the photo to emphasize or de-emphasize parts of the photo.
I agree with all of the above! I find that converting to black and white is my go-to, as well as brightening and playing with the contrast. The nice thing about scrapping in a photo editing program is you can tweak it as you're putting your layout together, so you can consider the supplies you're using as you are making the edits. Sometimes the colors or style of the product I'm using will inform my decisions for photo editing.
Oh wow, I need to learn how to do this! I have used a couple of the suggestions here (cropping; converting to black-and-white), but I'd like to learn more about blending and masking. Anyway, I use iffy photos all the time. Since my favourite kind of scrapping is family history scrapping, and my wonderful parents were not wonderful photographers (blurry? out-of-focus? Dad's finger over the lens yet again? yeah, that's a typical family photo...), if I didn't use iffy photos I'd have very little to work with at all! Here's a typical family photo (the struggle is real):
Most of my photos are iffy-out of focus with the actual subject way too small. I’m currently doing a heritage project and using photos from the 1920s-40s. The actual photos are small 2” x 3”, but I feel ❤️ blessed that my ancestors were such avid photographers and the photos have been salvaged over the past century. I scan them at 600 dpi which helps with clarity as I increase their size for layouts. You bet I use them!
Scrap them! These pics were really dark, I'm not sure I edited them at all. I'm usually too lazy LOL: Again, dark photos, but these I believe I lightened up: This whole series of photos aren't my fave; it was humid and my hair was frizzy. Scrapbooked it anyways!
I've used iffy photos on many occasions using many of the techniques shared here. The photo on this layout wasn't great quality, so I used words to describe what was happening in the photo. In particular, my sister's head is at the lower right of the photo, and I described who she was as well as her age. I even focused in on the cat in the doll dress and highlighted it as an accent photo in spite of the blurriness because I wanted to show off that part of the photo.
