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Photo editing for the horrendous photographer

HeatherB

HeatherB

Ain't nothin wrong with a few dust bunnies!
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Joined
Jun 2, 2010
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OK, I admit it. I'm a horrible photographer. But that doesn't stop me from clicking away, trying to capture our life as everything goes by far too quickly. :giggle But surprisingly, I haven't done a lot of photo editing before. I usually extract because there is something embarrassing in the background. So here's a real surprise to me (but maybe this is normal for most people). Using just a couple M4H Tool Kit actions, I went from this:

Teba-before.jpg


to this:

Teba-after.jpg


I couldn't believe it. I was ready to trash the photo, but I really wanted this in my fall page. Now all I need to do is crop.


So....those of you who play with photo actions to take it up a notch (whether that is from bad-to-normal in my case, or from normal-to-amazing in your case!), show me your before and afters. I'm really interesting in seeing how photos can be rescued. I really couldn't believe the results I got and that's a first try.
 
Well... you have to tell me which action you ran on this because I love the results! I'm not a great photographer either, so I can use all the help I can get! :)
 
Heather, that's not a horrendous photo at all! You exposed for the dog, which caused the grass to be too light, but not blown out. Nice edit!

Here's one I think I saved as best as I could from my birthday last year. After:
horrendous_after.jpg


Before:
horrendous_before.jpg

(and this shows why I was so stoked this year when DH took some decent pictures of me)

It was really hard to edit because the side of my face is blown out.
 
Wow - Christine, you really rescued that photo! Great job - I usually have a lot of trouble when light has blown out one side of the face.

Karen, I tweaked some actions from A Very M4H ToolKit. I used Brushed On Darks action which takes the photo and creates a layer with a black mask. Then you use a soft brush to "brush" on your photo where you want it darker (basically painting white onto the mask). Then I took that layer and duplicated a few times, changed blending modes and opacity and brushed those separately.
 
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