Matt and I have been playing with Photoshop a lot lately. I have always used Photoshop to brighten and resize my photos.  For example, here is the picture as the camera took it:

Lily
01 October 2008

Much too dark. So I would brighten it:

But lately, Matt and I have been brightening, upping the contrast, and then adding a faux-dodge look to it:

A lady had written on her photo blog that she had to tweak a photo so it represented what she had seen with her eyes. This last photo of Lily is what I saw that morning when I was looking over my desk at her and grabbed my camera to capture her beauty. The first photo — the photo straight from the camera — is a muddy version of the reality. I had to digitally tweak it afterwards to reveal what I had originally seen and wanted to photograph.

I wonder if this is a problem with digital cameras, or if film cameras also photograph a slightly watered-down, muddy version of what was so brilliant in reality.

Let’s look at another photo, one of my recent favorites. This is how the camera took it. It was a nice exposure, so I didn’t tweak the brightness that much:

But recently, I brightened it, raised the contrast, and added a faux-dodge look to it:

Very cool.

Here we have the contrast and brightness increased, but the faux-dodge has not been applied:

Of the two, I’m not sure which I like better.

I have a lot to learn about Photoshop. I didn’t realize that it could take a nice photo and turn it into a beautiful photo.