July One Photo Focus

I’ve just stumbled upon an editing challenge that normally I’d never tackle. I only edit my photos barely visibly. And only with what mother nature gave me (that is, Windows). I’ve tried other stuff but it doesn’t appeal.

Since Stacy P. Fischer, who runs this challenge, replied so quickly and positively to my question whether I should still post my edit even though the deadline has long passed and the results are visible on her blog, I’m doing it here.

First the photo as given to all (a bit low resolution, no?), provided by Bren Ryan of RyanPhotography. It was dark enough to scream for editing and even I heard it. The second photo is what I did to the first one in a minute or so, just how I usually edit mine.

Photo: Bren Ryan. Edit: Manja Mexi Movie

If I was to describe steps with my faithful Photo Gallery Windows 2012, it goes like this every time I edit:

First I crop the photo to my desire but here there was nothing to crop.

Then, or at least at some point in between, I straighten the lines, which can be a tough call. Sister once asked me: but what do you align it to? I guess the sea is the safe bet. If there is no sea and no two verticals or horizontals appear to be parallel, I sigh a little and move on. Here I made the roof more crooked but the ground line is more straight now. And that’s more important. No?

Next is “Adjust exposure” and out of the four options I start at the bottom: “Highlights” go abruptly to the left, and “Shadows” go slightly to the right, “Contrast” goes to the right too, a bit more, as for “Brightness” it depends, here obviously it went to the light.

With “Color” I don’t like to play at all much, the only thing I often do is remove the excessive blues by gently sliding right in “Color temperature”.  “Tint” I leave alone, it makes everything look uglier. And “Saturation” I only use when the photo looks fakey and I wish to tone the colours down a bit. In this case I added some, however.

The last bit is “Adjust detail” which frankly I don’t get all that well, so I rarely use it. If the photo seems out of focus (it can also be my eyesight slowly going), I click “Analyze” and only then I move “Sharpen” a little, and I did it here too.

Here you have it, my super pro editing technique. If you’re chuckling, I must tell you how proud I am for at least not using Auto-Adjust any more. I won’t say “I hope you like my edit” because I frankly couldn’t help you if you do or if you don’t. I know that to me it’s the only one acceptable out of all who contributed theirs. Have a look, here they are all together. And I wish to thank Stacy for letting me jump in late like that.

This challenge sheds light on what can be done with a photo to a very high degree and to me, as someone who is – obviously – not too technical, educated, trained etc, it’s very revealing.

I’m not saying that I don’t like other entries, on the contrary, I find them fascinating, especially all together like this.

I just don’t wish to do that to a photograph I am about to post.

For July One Photo Focus