Before And After | Ladies Learn

So we took this fabulous trip down to Rocky Point, Mexico. Kids were great, food was awesome, company was wonderful, weather…. kinda crummy. When I came back to view all my pictures I realized that they lost some of the warmth and sunshine that beach shots should have. Leave it to photoshop to turn my cloudy pictures into a tropical “warm” paradise. I’m going to teach you how to “warm” up your pictures. Here’s one of my lil Josie.

Straight out of the camera (SOOC)

First off I add my Color Pop action.

Go to Filter – Adjustments – Photo Filter

Now select Warming (81)

Here, you can adjust the “Density” for more or less “warmth”. I like 15 for this picture.

Okay, now it looks more like the bright and sunny day we were looking for.

To really finish off this picture I’m going to run one of my favorite actions and give it a slight crop. I ran “Pool Party” at 30% opacity from Totally Rad Action’s (click the link on the right sidebar to check out all their amazing actions. You can also get this particular action for free from Pioneer Woman’s blog. It is called “Seventies” in her action set. Actually go ahead and download both of her action sets, they are fabulous.

Have fun trying this technique, it seems that all outside pictures could use a little “warmth”. Now when it comes to indoor pictures sometimes they appear to warm or yellow. Do these same technique only choose a cooling filter and adjust the density to achieve the right temperature in your picture.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Lights, Camera, ACTIONS!, Photography, Secrets & Tips | Tagged before and after pictures, editing pictures in photoshop, photoshop actions | Comments (0)

After teaching you about levels and curves, you now have an idea as to how I created this action. It’s basically that with just a slight saturation boost. So download this action and try it out on some of your favorite pictures. One thing you have to keep in mind is that the picture must be properly exposed or it won’t give you the same results.

Download Aubry’s Color Pop action!

After you click on the link you can have it automatically show up in Photoshop or you can save it somewhere on your hard drive.

Here is one of my pictures straight out of the camera (SOOC).

Here I applied “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

SOOC

After “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

SOOC

After “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

I know it is pretty subtle, but I love keeping things natural. From here I feel like it is technically perfect and ready if you wanted to run some further actions for added creativity. I would call this complete after i burned around the edges and warmed it up a bit. I will do a post on how to give a picture more warmth or cool it down a bit in the near future.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Lights, Camera, ACTIONS!, Photography | Comments (1)

It’s called the Rule of Thirds:

This is a principle where you imagine a tic-tac-toe sign over your picture and then wherever the points intersect that is where your eyes are naturally drawn to. It’s more compelling than having your subject smack dab in the middle.

Here are some examples:

Now, you can also crop a picture to allow for your point of interest to fall into one of these intersections. I love cropping a picture afterwards and making it “look” the way I was intending it to look when I snapped the photo.

Before the crop

After the crop, much better. (And it always helps to edited it a bit)

Now there are times where this rule can be broken. Here’s an instance where i put the “subject” in the middle. This works great for reeeaaallly close-up shots or where your background is not distracting, and your eye can easily just focus to the middle.

Start choosing your focus or cropping with this rule in mind. Also, next time you are watching a movie notice where the guy filming is placing his subject… they tend to follow this rule as well.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Photography, Secrets & Tips, The Basics | Tagged basics, before and after, Photography, rule of thirds, secret, tips | Comments (0)

Let’s make those pearly whites prettier than ever. here is a simple way to make ‘em sparkle.

Open up your picture in photoshop. (make sure you are done editing it)

Find your lasso tool on the righthand toolbar

Now lasso around the teeth you want to whiten. (make sure your Feather is set to 1 px, it’s located at the top, can’t miss it)

Now click Image – Adjustments – Hue/Saturation as shown above.

Now set it to Yellows and slide the bar over to the right and clean up those lovely teeth. Don’t go too crazy – keep it natural.

Wahlaa, quick and easy and your subjects will appreciate the cosmetic dentistry.

Here’s the before/after.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Photography, Secrets & Tips | Tagged before and after, Photography, photograpy tips, photoshop, photoshop tips | Comments (0)

I’m so dang excited to jump into all this. I don’t even really know where to begin so just bear with me because I WILL cover everything. I think I want to start with a lil’ editing in photoshop. It really just takes a good picture – to it’s most awesome potential. when you see a picture and think how do those eyes sparkle so much and how is that color so bold and vivid, it is because they used some techniques in photoshop that you are all going to learn… here.

Let’s start with “levels” and “curves”. This just makes the picture pop. These are always the first two things I do to my pictures, it sets it up perfectly if you want to throw an action on it later on.

Levels – adds some depth and brightens

Curves – bumps up contrast, brightness, and color.

josie before

Here is my picture straight out of the camera (SOOC). Looks nice but needs a lil’ help.

Open up your picture in photoshop… click the button in the bottom lefthand corner that’s a half black and half white circle (as shown here).

josie 1

levels

Now slide the left mini triangle to the right and see how it adds some “blacks” or more depth to the picture. Let’s brighten it a bit by taking the middle mini triangle and sliding it to the left. Each picture will need more or less tweaking, but this is fun to play around with to get the look that you want. I tend to favor pictures with more of the blacks brought out.

josie 1 levels

Now go ahead and click that same circle button where you will see “curves”.

josie 1 curves

Here you will see a graph looking thing. Place a dot in each of the places that is shown below and ever so slightly take one dot up and the other dot down. This is what is called an s-curve. Even the slightest movements go a long way. You can see here that this particular picture only needed a little umph.

josie 1 s curve

Here is the before and after.

Okay, I know, not a big difference, but try out these techniques on some of your pictures and you’ll be amazed with the difference it makes.

before after

Now the only thing bugging me is how dark the shadow is on the left side of her face so let me tell you a tool I use ALL the time – the dodge and burn tool.

burn dodge tool

First I dodged (made lighter) the left side of her face and her eyes, and then burned (made darker) some of her tutu so it would show up a lil’ more. Keep in mind I keep the exposure at around 15%. You’ll see where you can change that at the top of the screen when you click on either the dodge or burn tool.

before after better

Okay, I’d say a big enough improvement that takes about 1 min to do. From here I would be ready to add an “action” to make it fit more of my style. Or you could just sharpen it and call it good.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Photography, The Basics | Tagged photo, Photography, photography tips, photoshop tips | Comments (0)