This evening, I went and purchased this book to teach me about doctoring photos using Photoshop Elements.
The problem now is that I feel like I cannot move forward with any photo editing because there is too much to learn and I know NOTHING. I thought I knew more before I bought this book. And Andy is sick on the couch with a nasty head cold so I don’t want to bug him with questions.
This is a common response for me when I delve into an area completely new to me. I feel overwhelmed and feel like I need to learn absolutely everything about it, which is impossible, so I get frustrated. In short, I have little patience for my own ignorance once I am interested in something.
The cool thing about this book is that it tells you how to do exactly what you want to do rather than going into a huge theory lesson behind it all. I need to do a bit before even know what theory I need to learn so I like that pressing S then Z then holding the Ctrl key followed by J can help me remove dark circles below eyes even though I don’t know exactly what I just did to do it (besides pressing keys). And by the way, if you are interested in this book or others like it, definitely buy it online as I paid nearly $20 more in the store because I wanted it today while I have some time on my hands.
I will try two different attempts at this with the photos voted on and commented on by my faithful readers. Here are the originals of the photos:
Photo #1, Wrapping paper (at the request of Sara):
Original
Doctored
To doctor it, I cranked up the brightness and contrast and then followed steps for a “trendy high-contrast portrait effect.” At this point, that is about all I have in my bag of tricks. To see a higher resolution version, select the Doctored version of the photo.
Photo#2, Potato Face
Original
Doctored
Same effects as the first photo but I didn’t adjust the brightness and contrast since I had used a flash when I originally took the photo. Again, to see a higher resolution version of the doctored photo, select it. I like the doctored version except for the fact that I lost her blue eyes. I will need to learn how to keep the eye color in a future lesson.
Oh and at Tamara’s request, I added the following photo at higher resolution you can see when you select the photo.
I have to admit I am scared to ask your thoughts. Do you like the originals or the doctored versions better? I will adjust what I learn next in Photoshop Elements based on your feedback. Man, you are powerful! 
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December 29th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Doctored better, for sure! I think the potato face pic is beautiful. Seriously beautiful! Even tho you lost her blue eyes, just the texture and shading and colors of the photo are GORGEOUS.
sara´s last blog ..Tuesday Twee: Blue Ribbon Dog
December 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Yay for high res! I LOVE that photo, so cute.
I’m a fan of more natural photos to where you can’t tell they’ve been doctored, but I’m the first to admit that I used to do LOTS of edits on my photos when I was experimenting. It’s really the only way to learn how to use the different actions and to figure out what you want. They still look cool though.
One suggestion you can try is to adjust the white balance on your camera when you’re taking photos. You can use the custom feature and create your own white balance or you can use the camera’s pre-set white balance features (sunny, cloudy, flash, tungsten…).
The picture at the high chair has perfect white balance where the wrapping paper picture has a little bit of a yellow/red tint. Sometimes auto white balance is the only thing that gives the best shot, but occasionally a custom or pre-set that looks better. You always have to play with it to see.
If you’re able to eliminate those kinds of things before you even have to touch the photo, it gives you more room to make other fun changes.
Again they’re great photos, those are just some things that I’ve experienced and learned while experimenting.
Tamara´s last blog ..Newborns! Tristyn – Boise Idaho Newborn Photographer
alecia Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Thanks for the feedback. Can’t I fix the white balance with the tools afterwards too? What is the advantage of doing it on the camera rather than in PhotoShop?
December 29th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
I don’t have photoshop, so I don’t know if this would make sense, but can you boost the saturation of the blue hue within photoshop to regain the blue in her eyes… I have been able to regain details that get lost by adjusting the individual color hues within aperture, but like I said, that is aperture and is a totally different program… Good pics though…the doctored versions have a really cool effect.
The other thing that I use a lot, is adjusting the black point and recovery (again aperture elements, so I don’t know if they apply to photoshop) but for instance, on the wrapping paper picture, where you lose a bit of detail between her left cheek and shirt, by increasing the recovery, you can gain some of that detail, while still having that effect. The other thing I like screwing with is the various different filter saturations, when dealing with black and white “monochrome” pictures.. This can be done with the monochrome mixer in aperture, but I don’t know how photoshop works…
Not that I know what I am doing at all, but just take it one step at a time, and play with it… That way you will have fun while learning, in lieu of getting overwhelmed by it all…. Great job though, I am so excited that you are getting into this..
alecia Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Thank you for the ideas. I look forward to learning more about this. It is a whole new world.
December 30th, 2009 at 12:34 am
To be honest, I love original picture.—Are you going to kill me? Ha~
Ava Dong´s last blog ..Gastro-enteritis 患了肠胃炎
alecia Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Thank you for the honest feedback. I actually think I agree with you. Hopefully I can learn more about photoshop so that I can make the photos look better. I hope you are feeling better!
December 31st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Have you tried lightroom yet? You will fall in love and you won’t have to learn so much in Elements. Love the pictures. I like the doctored wrapping paper picture and the original food picture. How’s that for diplomacy?
alecia Reply:
January 1st, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I have not tried lightroom. Do you recommend it over Photoshop Elements?
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Lightroom is a digital shoebox with some kick’n features. It isn’t a full featured photo editor — the adjustments you can make aren’t like adding/removing stop signs, (ok a lightroom pro probably could, but very limited) — more what you can do are just altering the color, contrast, sharpness, etc.
As for your question about in-camera vs. in-software, white balance, you will get at least 2 (maybe more) answers. Depending on the circumstances involved, I may go either way.
When to use in-camera:
1. lighting is predictable / stable
2. camera doesn’t support raw image formats
3. you may need to print without editing (say from a memory card) and without a computer
4. to save yourself time later
When to use on-computer:
1. If the camera’s white balance feature stinks, plan to adjust later.
2. If your camera can shoot in raw mode. (you might still want to set a manual white balance in the scene, but that is optional)
3. You have tricky lighting or mixed lighting — incandescent and flourescent mixed, daylight and incandescent, flash and candle light, etc. or lighting that is changing frequently while you shoot. (partly cloudy day, moving between indoors and out frequently, moving shade, moving subjects)
4. When you mess up and take pictures with the wrong white balance setting on the camera. “drat, I wanted sun icon not the incandescent icon!” (gee, I’ve never done that before
Why would it make a difference?
If you have no raw format, then the only place “all” the data is available is on-camera. After that, the image is jpeg compressed into some transfer color space (sRGB or AdobeRGB, for example), and between that and the jpeg lossy compression, you immediately start losing data. This can sometimes be discernible differences when you start really making adjustments to contrast and lighting in a software package later. Large areas of approximately the same color may turn “flat” and lose all contrast — usually this is most noticable on almost white and almost black areas of the original image that clip at black or white. Sometimes it will show up in saturated colors too, but less often.
hmmm…. this smells like a blog post all its own — there are probably also tons of web sites out that discuss this topic better than I can present it in a comment. If you really would like to see some fake math that pretends to be the manipulations, I can show you sometime.
Nolan
alecia Reply:
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Wow, this is really great advice. Thank you for taking the time to write it! I am really intrigued by Lightroom!
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Did I mention that I really really really like lightroom?
If you have someone who can show you live, that is probably best.
For my purposes, it serves as a catalog of images that are searchable, and the thing that really pushed me to buy it is it when I get back from a trip or outing and have hundreds of images to sift through — top notch workflow for that. I can go through with one keystroke per image: “like it, love it, maybe later, delete, delete, like it” and you can easily embed keywords into the exif data for your images to make them easier to find later. things like: (“San Diego Trip December 2009″ “Nicolas” “Dolphins” “Sea World”)
Nolan