Our First Snow ~ Original & Enhanced Images

THE ENHANCED IMAGE: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE: THE ENHANCED IMAGE: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE: THE ENHANCED IMAGE: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE: THE ENHANCED IMAGE: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE: THE ENHANCED IMAGE: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE: I feel like I am baring my soul by posting original images along with the enhanced version. I wanted to share the editing process with my readers/clients that may be interested in the process of making a good picture great. It is also a great learning tool for me to see them side by side. I can determine if I brightened it too much or added too much red tone. I think I may have, but when I look at the photo by itself, I love it, so I can't decide. I will come back to it with fresh eyes next week, and redo the original images to my satisfaction. I use Photo Shop Elements and I shoot with a Canon Rebel XS with a 50mm 1.8 lens. So if you know anything about photography you know that I am not using the fancy stuff to create my photography. Here are some of the steps I may take to improve my images. MY DIGITAL DARKROOM:Work Flow ~ Color Variations: Increase Red: Decrease Blue: Lighten ~ Color Curves or Levels (ctr-C) ~ Unsharp Image (100 to 200), (3), (5 to 12) ~ Color for skin tone * These are my main functions. I sometimes use almost all of them and other times may just do unsharp image or Color Curves to brighten the mid tones. I try and keep it simple so my image looks it's best, and not too over processed. On overcast days images tend to have a cool tone and I like the way my photos look when I decrease the blue. Warming up my images brings out the eyes and highlights the hair and skin making them look radiant! Each image takes 10 sec to 2 min to edit. Then I usually feel inspired and do BW versions and Sepia and opacity versions. I just can't help myself. All of my clients get ALL VERSIONS of an image they choose. So if they choose an image with different color variations, BW, sepia and so on, they will benefit by getting all of them. So they choose their 50 images and they may end up with 100. That's a pretty great deal!