Using iPhoto To Make Your Photos Pop

0 CommentsWednesday • July 27, 2011 • by Imei

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Until August 2010, I had a couple of camera choices for on-the-go shutterbug activity: a larger HD Camera and Recorder [does not fit in purse], and an Android phone [took grainy, disappointing photos not worth salvaging]. Buying an iPhone4 changed all that, but some of my photos were still better left to sending through a filter app like Instagram to make them look “artsy” [whatever THAT means]. Thanks to a comment from Paul Shadwell on Facebook, this blogpost is about taking a photo you love and making it pop using iPhoto.

I know that some of you are going to say, “I like the one on the top right better.” The metallic bounce off the escalator is quite spectacular, isn’t it? If I played with it even more, I could probably get even closer to the effect I wanted. But I wanted to show you what you can do in just 7 minutes of editing. Yes, seven whole minutes! And some of that time was just figuring out what each effect did to the photo. Once you understand each effect slider, you can achieve your results quickly.

I also removed some shadows on my face and light bounce on my forehead by using the “blemish” remover effect, which allows you to change the brush size to get fine detail. In the final cut, you’ll notice that I blurred some faces and brighter colored clothing of the people down below. If I add another notch on “boost”, I might get more color, but not where I really wanted it, which would have been the blue paint on the eyes.

This blogpost came about because I was lamenting that I did not have Photoshop, the industry standard for photo editing. I have some young readers who might be saying that I’m too cheap to “invest”. But since this isn’t my industry, I’m not going to spend a lot for photo editing software, and if you check the latest prices of the more decent suites, they run upwards of $700 (and my eye naturally falls on the suites that are closer to 2K, when all is said and done) . I am happy to know that iPhoto is going to take care of my photo editing needs just fine, and I don’t have to spend another dime. Yet another reason to enjoy the world of Apple.

[At least, for now! HTML5, here we come!]

Posted in: Art, camcorder, cell phones, photography

Tagged with: camera, comiccon, costume, digital photo editing, easy photo editing, how to photo edit using iPhoto, iLife, iphoto, quick