First up, THANK YOU for your sweet, encouraging comments on yesterday’s photos. I am grateful we got to take them at all, and I’m glad so many of you were happy to chalk the haze up to an artsy effect.

However, I knew that if I wanted to actually print those photos to any kind of decent size (especially the one with all of us looking), the haze was going to be noticeable to the point of distracting (because here on the blog, my pictures are obviously much smaller and lower resolution than, say, a nice big 11X14 wall framer).

So, I was absolutely thrilled when several of y’all did some post-processing and sent me mock-ups of what that family photo could look like. Problem is, I don’t have Photoshop. I know, I know. I should. And my husband does have Photoshop Elements (which I only remembered this morning), but I am really unfamiliar with it and have a bad habit of shying away from technology that I don’t already know how to use and which takes a dedicated amount of time to figure out.

Several of you even offered to edit the raw file for me, which just makes my heart happy. Y’all are so nice!

But then one reader clued me in to photoshop.com, a free online, scaled down version of Photoshop, the real deal (AKA: perfect for a technophobe like me).

And so, I uploaded the original hazy family photo. Which looked like this, if you recall:

IMG_4202-001

…and used the “burn” tool on our faces and bodies only (I left the sky and deck hazy for the most part) and upped the fill light a scotch.

Which gave me this:

family photo fixed

It’s not the most elegant job ever, and I need more practice with the tool, but it’s an improvement!

Oh! And here was another contender that I didn’t post yesterday, which fared even better with a little bit of tweaking.

familylake2014-001

Again, I left the haze in the sky and on the deck to maintain the dreamy, seaside effect (I even left a tiny bit of it on Shaun’s right foot, so you can see what a difference it makes; Ha! No, I didn’t…that was a total accident that I need to go back and fix, but you have to admit it sounded good! :)).

I love being able to more clearly see the happy expressions on my kiddos’ faces.

Want a side-by-side comparison?

family lake photo collage

It’s not a drastic contrast, and I will probably keep playing around with it until I get it just right, but I’m much happier with it already.

So, all that to say, if you end up with a less-than-stellar photo and don’t have full-blown Photoshop, head on over to Photoshop.com and play around a little. You may just love your results.

And, again, thank you to all of you who gave me suggestions for the fix. Y’all are too kind and are the best readers a girl could ask for!

0 Comments

  1. So cool! Who knew?!? Such cute pics! Didn’t get a chance to comment on your vacay post, by it did sound wonderful! Glad y’all got to get away!!

I love hearing from you guys!