As far as Sunday rituals go, mine is tennis. Early morning and the light is beautiful, it's not so hot to get a couple of sets squared away.

On this occassion I was very pleased with the composition of this picture. It did require a slight re-crop, but nothing major. 

It's rare (in the UK at least) to say that a  sky can ever be too blue. This was certainly the case today. In order to lessen it's impact, I overlayed a slight gradient to lighten the sky. Once I had done this, I wanted to apply the inverse to the foreground as I feel it is important to have balance.

Lastly, the picture received a slight blue tint to bring out the shirt and parts of the background. Thoughts?

New Forest with content aware fill

Annoyingly, as I took this picture, my sister and her boyfriend decided to amble through my shot. I hadn't even realised they were there until I reviewed the image at home. Short of making a trip back out to the New Forest and finding this spot with the right lighting again, I decided Photoshop would be my only solution.

Initially I toyed with the content aware removal setting, which just left tell-tale signs. But the solution came thanks to Digital Photo Magazines suggestion in their June 2011 edition. I eventually used the selection tool to highlight the intrusion and coupled with the content aware and cloning tool, I managed to get a decent looking shot.

Down by the Sea

Still don't think this picture quite conveys how blue the sea is in Bournemouth.

Only played around with the clarity (+100, doesn't really count as it's just on max.) and contrast to bring out the detail on the foreground.

Slight over exposure on the original, recovery sorted it out a treat.

May have to take another trip down South sometime soon. Although next time I will make sure I wear suncream...

Picture of Youth

Here is a collection I am very much still working on. It is mostly a recovery project. These pictures were taken on film (sorry not sure what type) back in the early 90s.

What I would like to show you in this entry are the pre and post editing versions, with a little commentary.

Pre

My father kindly took the time to scan these and several other similar pictures.

Here you will see that the original was exceptionally grainy.

First thing I had to do was make a decision. Remove the freckles or not? Well, I first decided to remove the spots then continue on that basis. As you will see, the freckles went.

Post

Next, I used the adjustment brush to bring out some clarity in the eyes and mouth. On the face I really took the clarity down to smooth the face to emphasise the detail I was trying to bring out in the eyes and mouth.

Still struggling with the filters for the reds which are really evident by the t-shirt's appearance. This continues to be a problem in the next shot.

Pre

I'm hoping you can see what I'm trying to achieve in this shot.

I really wanted to bring out the red metalwork, which in the original was already benefiting from some great lighting in the classic car show.

Issues that have arisen appear to be in the darker end of the spectrum.

Post

As a result I am still in the process of trying to correct the graining on the jumper and along the side panel of the Morgan.

If anyone has a quick fix in Camera Raw, I would be very interested to hear them.

Here my aim was actually to raise the impact of the DeLorean. 

Pre

I was quite happy as there was less toying round with the settings in Camera Raw than I expected. Maybe I just got lucky.

As I recall, the luminance function was my saving grace. However the default settings weren't cutting it, so I lowered some of the detail level as the dark colours play quite a part in this piece. 

Post

In the car, I decided the face need lighting as it was surrounded by all dark colours. Unfortunately I didn't see as much detail come out as I had hoped.

I think, next I would like to tackle some of the detail on the tyres and perhaps interior of the car. Particuarly as the wheels of a DeLorean are pretty iconic.

Pre

I will be honest, most of these pictures required much the same treatment: remove grain, smooth and lighten.

However the difference in each has been the colours. These were all deep in French wine country (with the exception of the DeLorean and Morgan shots). 

Consequently, in this region of France (Maine et Loire - most will know it for its well known Samur red wines) the stone used to build houses is similar to limestone. All I know is it used to keep the heat in during Winter and the heat out in Summer.

Post

Either way, it provides a great backgorund. Fortunately its beauty wasn't lost in the process of capture and edit. Two events, 20 years apart.

The final shot I have worked on to date. 

Pre

This is probably my favourite, partly due to the lovely 'limestone' fire place decorated for christmas and the subjects' expressions.

Therefore these elements were my focus. 

I began by cleaning up the lines/edges of the fire by sharpening. Then I wanted to lighten the subjects' expressions so they really popped out of the shot.

Post

This was probably the trickiest aspect as a great deal of the surrounding area is dominated by the black coal marks at the rear of the fireplace. No doubt the result of one too many great warm roaring fires.

Regardless I managed to target the areas I wanted and highlighted the expressions to see what these two were really thinking.

Layout

So I'm happy with the layout, but need to find a new background. Templates are quite limited. As soon as I find/shoot one I'm happy with I will upload.

New Forest Collection

As the British weather has picked up over the past few weeks (with the exception of this weekend), I had the opportunity to head out to the New Forest, Hampshire to picnic, stroll and shoot. Below are three of my favourite shots of the day:

This was one of my favourite shots during the day. It already had great composition before I placed it in Camera Raw.

I'm really a fan of F1 photogapher Darren Heath, who uses really exagerated colours to add movement to his pieces which is why I chose to increase the hue/saturation on these pieces in order to add vibrance to a 'nature' shot.

Also decided this shot would benefit from a graduated filter (from top to bottom, approximately 50% of the shot) as by this point the light was fading and some of the detail was lost higher up in the canopy.

I enjoyed taking this picture as it had a natural rule of three and in particular its rare to get a picture of my sister as she is usually camera shy. Again I have tried to keep the vibrant nature by increasing the saturation to approximately +25. However as this was a crop of the original JPG I was unable to keep the detail no matter how much I tried to sharpen it.

When I took this shot the light had faded drastically and I was shooting on a B&W film effect. This meant there was some slight luminance which was causing some graining. To correct for this I toyed around with luminance and masking options in Camera Raw for quite a while. I eventually ended up with an image which was significantly softer on the edges than the original. Once I reframed the shot I got one of my favourite shots of the day (On the plus side everyone's smiling too, which is a bonus).