Taking Memorable Family Pictures
I am not a photographer. I leave that job to those who truly know what they are doing. But I am a believer. I believe that our personal family photo albums can be filled with high quality, interesting photos – which our point and shoot digital cameras generally have the capacity to achieve. Your point and shoot probably came with a manual that will only improve your pictures. But this post is dedicated to what you do after you upload them to your computer.
Last Christmas my husband gave me a Canon Rebel, which is not a point and shoot although it does have that feature. And I believe I actually screamed when he gave it to me. The camera came with some software that I have grown to love and adore, and your camera likely came with some software as well which will allow you to enhance or change your picture.
Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation and Sharpness are the things you will want to familiarize yourself with, and which are the sole features I used on these pics. And nothing is better than just opening up your program and playing around with some photos. Its amazing how many looks you can make from one picture.
This is the origninal picture. Look how cute my neices and nephews are.
This is increasing the saturation, contrast and brightness from the original photo
This is low saturation. Remember when it used to be a trend to color your pictures with a pen to get really light colors like this? It was a scrapbooking phenomenon about 10 years ago.
This is low saturation with less contrast and brightness than the one above
Here the saturation is set at zero
And here the contrast and brightess are pumped up
Here are some more examples:
The original
Higher saturation, contrast and brightness. Very teenagerish – I picture this in a neon pink picture frame with stickers stuck to it.
No saturation and higher contrast. What do you want to be that this will make it to a certain neice’s facebook page soon?
The original
Increased saturation and contrast. And cropped.
Lower saturation. I love the shadows this creates. And I think it would be really great to do a wall collage with pictures with this coloring in some chunky wood frames.
Another original
Higher brightness and contrast. Look at her lashes.
No saturation with the higher contrast and brightness
Higher Brightness. Different by kind of cool. Look at her eyes
The original.
High saturation, brightness and contrast
Lower saturation. Imagine this on that wall collage.
Extra high saturation.
The Original
Slightly higher saturation and contrast
No saturation and slightly higher contrast
No saturation and high contrast and high brightness
ok one more.
The original – isn’t he adorable? Note the unrelated foot. Literally – that foot in not related to me.
Low saturation and higher contrast. And no foot.
Higher saturation and contrast
I can’t help it. One more.
The original. That is my sister, my neice, and my hunk of burnin love in the back
Higher saturation and contrast. Look at my neice’s face. Priceless.
I was trying to get my sister’s legs to disappear
Lower saturation
Divas.
Thanks for doing these for us. The girls have been looking through them all day. Lucky us that we get to be the beneficiaries of your blogging. 🙂