February 8, 2015badfish

The Clinic–Photo Rehab

View from my bedroom window
View from my bedroom window

I’ve just learned of a group of photographers who are in rehab. I’m not sure what that means because they were in the Photo 101 course, I believe, which I was not in…ever the outlier here. They seem a friendly and social group of folks, and they have invited other photographers to join in their group to share their work—some use iPhones, some SLR’s, and some post edit like pros. You can find the group and join in the fun at this site bridging lacunas, hosted by Lucile.

I resist post editing. Actually, I don’t do it. All my photos are straight out of the camera. I simply have not learned how to do editing, and I truly resist that learning curve on Photoshop. But one of the

bloggers in rehab mentioned that she did her editing in iPhoto. I have iPhoto on my Mac Pro. I went there just to see what was what with it, and to see if I could manage a little post editing.

This is how professional I am. I moved a few of those little tabs, and watched the colors change on my photo. I saved this one. And cropped it just to see if I could. But I can’t tell you what changes I made, or how I got these colors, sorry. I like the original photo better, but at least I feel a little better about the possibilities of editing in the future, if for instance, I wanted to play with the “mood” or go monochrome with some photo. Or at least crop the thing.  The photo is the view out my bedroom window these days.

View from my bedroom window, cropped and fiddled with
View from my bedroom window, cropped and fiddled with

Shot with my Sony RX-10,      F2.8,      1 second exposure,      24mm (equivalent)

96 comments

  1. I try not to edit much as well. But my point and shoot camera deteriorates the quality/actual color of picture,so I try to make them look how they actually were, as I saw them.

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    • Thanks so much for commenting because I then went to your blog and found you! I loved your story. But I chose not to look back further to find out what had gone wrong in the last few weeks. Maybe I’ll read that later, but today, I just wanted to know you as that little girl–and yes, I remember days when a child could wander the streets and be safe.

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      • I am glad you read the happy moments. The sad part was the 1st time I shared in all these months. I prefer to write to make me smile and others as well 😀
        I think we met through my second blog colorpalette and that’s when I was following you 😀 Glad you found this blog of mine too 🙂

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  3. I think it’s more powerful before the changes, but at least now you can see some of the stuff you can do.
    I can’t remember if iphoto lets you adjust saturation. PS and LR lets you adjust saturation by colour, but maybe in iphoto it adjusts all colours at the same time. Anyway if you can adjust one colour at a time it’s most likely the yellow in the rice field photo that needs to be taken down a bit.
    A.

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    • I just checked, iPhoto adjusts saturation, but it’s one tab, so I guess it’s all colors as opposed to one. One thing I like about your art, your photography, is that you have developed a style. I think that’s important, and cool. But I don’t think I can do anything the same way. I won’t write two stories the same, I won’t take photographs the same. And when/if I learn PS/LR and even though some pros say you should and despite that I like your style, I don’t imagine I’ll have one style for my photos. To be honest, I like the rice field’s deep colors. I know it’s off and not like real life, and photographers know what’s what with that photo, but to me, it seems to capture the…what?…thrill or ambiance of the rice paddy (as opposed to relating reality). But I see what you mean, and I really would like to see what you would do with it in LR, discover what taking out one color would do. If I send you a copy, do you have time to fiddle with the yellow? Don OK?

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      • I know what you mean about the over saturation making a statement about the whole ambience, and eye-popping wondrousness of the rice fields. They are magical. But sure, send it over and I’ll play with it for fun. Don’s doing great. His injury is pretty much healed and we’ve been out on one hour steep hikes every day for a while now so getting fit again. Yay!
        Alison

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      • Cool. I’ll email it. Just by looking at it, I sure wouldn’t have known what color to take down. I only noticed the yellow you mentioned because of the color of the rice. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to “know” what color needs editing, or if I’ll just have to jiggle one, then another??

        So the pilates is working!! And your own brand of cosmic healing, I assume?

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    • Yeah, I can see…from other people’s photos…that editing is a big help in producing finer photos. And like you, I have little time to learn the process of editing, let alone perform the art. And thanks so, so much for spending your time checking out my site. And commenting on numerous posts. And also for you having such a cool blog title, I absolutely love it.

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  5. I like the unedited version better. Learning to edit photos is important though. I’d suggest Lightroom by photoshop. It only costs about $100 to download, it is super easy to learn and you can make some major improvements to your pictures.

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    • Jeff, Here’s the really sad thing. I have both Photoshop and LightRoom on my laptop. And I can see from various photos I’ve seen that a little editing works wonders. But I just don’t take the time to learn. But now that I’ve had a slight taste (even if I don’t really like the result), maybe I’ll do a little in iPhoto, and gradually work my way up to LR? I would think you did a little post edit on that tea plantation photo, I’m wondering if you did anything to the Taj Hotel?

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  6. I was wondering where that first picture is located right outside your bedroom window? I, too little about editing. I have a simple program that let’s me do simple editing so when I need to I can crop and sharpen, change the contrast, add a border if I want. There are lots of ways to add different color effects but I rarely use it because I want it to look like the picture itself. Most often I do this things on other pictures I don’t take. More often it is when I take a picture of an older picture I want to share our have a copy on my hard drive. My husband uses a program called Gimp. There’s a learning curve to using that one – but he knows what he’s doing!

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  7. It’s always good to have a partner who “knows what he’s doing!” It makes life a little easier sometimes. My printer actually has the ability to edit photos, and I used it a bit, especially for cropping. But when I got my new MacBook Pro, the printer’s editing thingy would not work on it–too old a program, I guess? I am presently in Abu Dhabi, where that photo is taken from my window.

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  10. East Coast of where? Are you talking about the lovely Kallang River in Singapore where the original inhabitants used to hang out, and fish from their boats? No, that is a view of Abu Dhabi, where I am now hanging for a while.

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