Before and After

Before and after...I'm talking about Photoshop.  Photoshop is the darkroom of our time.  I used to spend hours in my darkroom trying to figure out ways to change things in a photograph.  Need the shadows to be darker or lighter?  Need more light, or less, in one place or another?  Need a tree removed from a landscape?  We used to do all these things and more, in the darkroom, by means of dodging, burning, cropping.  We would retouch negatives and take out blemishes and dust spots by using soft pencils and erasers.  

Today's equivalent of the darkroom, on steroids, is Photoshop.  Just the name Photoshop has taken on an almost generic quality.  Like Kleenex to mean any tissue, or if you are old enough, Kodak to mean any camera.  Photoshop is a program developed and sold by Adobe, but people use the term to mean any post processing.  It is even used as a verb, "it's OK, I'll just Photoshop it out later"  While processing hundreds of files is always the thing that pros complain about, I actually like doing it.  Seeing the potential in a shot, making a good shot great or a bad shot better.  

I take pride in presenting a shot that doesn't looked like it has been "Photoshopped".  Maybe it has something to do with all those hours, I used to spend in the darkroom.

Here are a couple of before and after shots that may be interesting.

click on any picture for a larger image

This is a nice shot of the happy couple at a wedding.  I liked the expressions on their faces, but the venue was a little dark and shadowy, and there are a lot of distractions in the background.  I also took the picture with them too close to the back wall so the shadows are too prominent.  I hated the light on the wall over the bride's head as well

Here is the exact same shot.  All I did was remove the background distractions in Photoshop and add a light vignette.  All you see now is the lovely bride and handsome groom.














click any picture for a larger image

This is a shot of Father Michael of Holy Trinity Church in Charlotte.  I took it in a classroom in the church with the standard fluorescent lighting in a quick 3 second, snapshot style.  Not too flattering and the pose is awkward.

This is the same shot as above.  I converted it to black and white then removed the name tag from his coat and the pen from his pocket.  I also cropped it to enhance the subject and lose some of the extraneous background, which I darkened slightly. 














I always enjoy these "before and after" kind of things and I will make it a point to post more in the future.  In the meantime, if you have questions about Photoshop or composition in general or just about anything, feel free to comment, or E-mail me.



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