Enhancing Your Photos

As I said in this week’s podcasts about Photoshop, I consider enhancing your photos as basic a task to good photography as taking off the lens cap before shooting. With the simple and easy tools now available for free, not to mention the dirt cheap copy of Photoshop you can get at the bookstore, there is really little excuse not to always present your very best efforts.

The above photos were taken in the greenhouses at the Biltmore Estates in Asheville this week. I’ve presented both the “before” and “after” versions to show you what I did in Adobe Bridge, which is companion software that comes in the Photoshop suite. Shooting in “camera raw,” I’ve adjusted the blacks, fill light, exposure and vibrance on each of these pictures, adding what I consider to be a considerable amount of “life” to otherwise well composed, but relatively drab pictures.

Be sure also to note the depth of field on these – I kept it “shallow” to highlight the texture of the flowers, by shooting at as low an ISO as I could (125) and still get vibration free pictures. A low ISO provides pictures with a lot of clarity (low “noise” level) but it also tends to lower the shutter speed too, which can cause difficulties with moving objects or holding the camera steady.