So I have honestly avoided image editing due to a few reasons. Number one is I think the best photos are the ones without any manipulation to the original. The ones that are not set up but taken as natural as possible (with a few exceptions). Now when it comes to nature and landscape your ability to snap photos in more natural light mixed with great wide angle mixed with wonderful macro shots equals some great photos. But my personal preference on both aspects of photography is to edit as little as possible. And further more the software can get rather expensive. So those are my hesitations to photo editing.
With that said I think you can do some wonderful things with photo editing software like sharpen an image, make it black and white, remove red eye and an array of effects then can really bring out your subject. In addition to those benefits I found a great free photo editing software call Gimp. It is free and has a tone of effects. Tutorials can be found on youtube also just by typing in Gimp in the search box. With all that said I wanted to just introduce my two test projects. I tried to do as little as possible but my main focus was to bring out the subject or the storyline in the photograph.
Isabella with Christmas Tree.
Now the image itself was taken with our Kodak Z612 had all standard setting with the exception of a high ISO setting (200 I think). The flash was turned off to avoid flare from the bulb. So I edited the photo below in Gimp and just free hand selected the bulb, inverted the selection and changed the rest of the photo to black and white with the below result.
This next image is a basic photo of our road with a car off in the distance. My original intent was to get some pictures of cars going by with a slow shutter speed to get the blurred effect but without a tripod I just cannot get this without blurring the entire photo. So that will be our next purchase after the update of our camera from a point and shoot to a SLR (Aim is for a Canon Rebel Xt1). So I changed my angle and brought it down to road level (still trying to keep the rule of thirds-keeping the horizon either in the top third or bottom third of the frame). I wanted to get depth so I adjusted my aperture, ISO with standard shutter speed. Here was the result.
Street view with car in distance.
The photo was edited much like the one above with the exception of highlighting the distant headlights to get them to pop out a bit. Then I just selected the above horizon and blurred image to abut 55 percent. With the below result. Keeping the yellow stripes in give a primary focal point.
Road picture with effects.
I also wanted to add in one that I had to edit due to lighting issues during the original (hence a good reason to photo edit). This is a picture of my grandfather in his Marine blues. A great story can be found about his time here (although he likes to put up a disclaimer that there was some fabrications and misquotes in this article). But we attempted to get some pictures of his blues after he had worked so hard on trying to restore it. After a few flash photos I noticed (like most flash images) it can leave the subject flat and take out much of the characteristics of the person and the background. So I attempted to remove all the lamp shades to prevent flash as a necessity. Only to discover after printing they all had a yellow glow. So here is the original with an attempted fix. Although we are working on a new shoot in the future this was a temporary fix. One negative about this is that the colors do not pop out and are lost in the rendering but the characteristics of a great man and war veteran come out loud and clear.
Grandfather in blues.
Now when edited I just sharpened the background lines, brought out the bricks more and did a sepia filter on it. With the below result.
Grandpa in blues.
