Pick Your Favorite Photo

I have been having so much fun editing photos lately! I downloaded Gimp recently and have to say it's really awesome! Dare I say that I love it so much that it is starting to replace my Paint Shop Pro software?  The truth is I wish I had downloaded Gimp before I bought that expensive software. But I do love my PSP!

Anyway, I have been playing around with some sunset images I have taken over the last few months and I can not decide if I like the originals or the edited pictures.  So I decided, Why not ask you! There are two photos in each group. I would love to hear your opinion on whether you like the original photo or if you like the edited one with the dynamic colors. Here we go:

Photo 1a Original

 Photo 1b edited

 

This image ended up really dark in the upper corners.  I am not sure if I like it but sadly, I can not avoid it right now.  In order to reduce the darkening in the corners, I have to buy a better camera and I can't afford to do that right now. 

Photo 2a original

 

Photo 2b edited

Photo 3a original

 

Photo 3b edited

Well, what do you think?  Leave a comment below with your opinion. Or email me, whatever. I would really like to hear what you have to say!

Until next time,

Gruvinmom

;)

Editing With Picasa

I have recently downloaded Picasa from Google and have edited some photo's to my liking so I thought you might like to see what I have done. I normally use Paint Shop Pro to edit everything and really like it; however, their are times when I want to edit in a hurry.

I took these pictures at Eagle Island, Idaho during a day long birthday celebration for my nice. It was a perfect day which turned into a perfect evening and a gorgeous sunset. Enjoy and feel free to take the photos if you like. Not that there any good but, you know, if you want them, take them.
Here is the original photo. I need to remember to remove the date from the bottom. The sunset was so beautiful! Once in a lifetime I'd say. I only wish my camera would perform for these great shots. Or maybe it's operator error ;) The first thing I did was sharpen the image. Below you can see an image of Picasa that shows the options for editing. Select "Effects", then "Sharpen". You should see a slide bar appear to determine how much you want to sharpen the image. I left it where it was and selected "Apply". Easy as pie!

Next I selected "Saturation". I left the sliding bar where it was and selected "Apply". Here is the result.

Okay, now we need to warm it up a bit. Select "Warmify". Picasa does it automatically. Here is the result.
Pretty nice for a picture that wasn't so good in the first place, huh! Picasa is pretty easy to use. It's a great free tool so I suggest you get it!