today i want to give you a few reasons why you should edit your photos before you print them. or post them on your blog. or email them to the grannies.
almost every day, clients come into the shop with their photos to choose paper. so, i get to see lots of different photos all the time. and i can not understand why people do not take a little extra time and effort to edit those photos before they print them.
this photo of the shop i took in the late afternoon, and there were long shadows. here i just used the 'enhance' button, and voila! see the improvement. it still isn't the best photo, but it is an improvement on the one i took.
the improved photo in this case is the top one, and the bottom one is the original.
i use kodak's photo editing software, that comes free with the camera. you can also download it from their website. please tell me if you have a problem with downloading this, i haven't tried it myself. it is not as complicated as photoshop. and it is free, so there is no excuse... it crops, enhances, and can change your photos to black and white, and sepia. you can use any other photo imaging software, there are a few around. of course, if you do use photoshop, you can do so much more. this is just for those of us who do not have photoshop, and according to me, this is the minimum editing you have to do before you print.
this photo i took of the 'travel' mini book that i posted about recently. i took this photo without the flash. using the 'enhance' button, i got this.
i really just clicked on the button. nothing else.
in south africa, if you go to the kodak photo shop, you can do all these edits on their machines. you just insert your disk, and follow the prompts. this means that you do not have to have the software on your computer, or even have to have access to a computer. and it is very user friendly.
when working on the machines, you can also edit the photos so you get 2-9 photos on one jumbo size. this means that you get photos that are smaller, from half a jumbo to very small ones. this is very useful when you have lots of photos of the same theme, you can scrap them all on one page together.
in these photos of sean, i changed it to black and white, and then cropped.
the cropping function is the one i use the most. i crop out all the distracting background.
then you can really play around. the only way to get comfortable and confident with the process is to play with it. if you save a separate copy of your original pic, then there is no reason not to experiment. at the machines in the shop, the edits are not saved on your disk, so if you do not like the results of your edits, you can just start over.
you can also take all those older photos that you have, that have lots of background and just the little person in the middle, scan them, and crop them. then re-print them in jumbo size. now the person is nice and full size in the photo.
i found a website called picnik, where you can do all sorts of edits. it is easy to use, you don't have to download anything, and it's free. you can also play, without worrying that you will 'damage' your original.
oooh, i just loooove photos of myself...
and this is what happens if you go mad on their site and click on everything, and play around. it aint perfect, but hey, it was my first attempt! great fun! i even whitened my teeth, and removed blemishes. now, if i could just find a way to do that to the 'real' me every morning.
for the amount of money and time you spend on your scrap page, surely spending some extra money and time on printing better photos to use on that page makes sense?
taking better photos in the first place, is of course also very important. for that i have to refer you to annette scholtz, as she is the photography and photoshop expert.
do you edit your photos? what software do you use? tell me.
you can find more photoshop, papercrafting and scrapbooking tutorials here.
jacki janse van rensburg - SCRAPPIN TIMES
this post was linked to by: scrapscene
