correctmyphotos

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays-Take photos of your holiday decorations.
Another use of your digital camera is to take photos of your holiday decorations so you can remember what you did last year. No, I am not being facetious.  A month or so ago my wife, Pat, and I were talking about Christmas decorations for this year and asked the obvious question, “What did we do last year?” So, I went to my photo files to locate a picture of last year’s Christmas tree and low and behold I couldn’t find one.  Apparently, I didn’t take one. Well, I got one of those looks that suggested I better not forget this year.  Actually, it really didn’t matter all that much because her tree decorations haven’t varied too much over the past several years. But, this year she came up with a new Christmas tree idea so I made sure I took some photos.  Then I started to play around with them and here is what I did with one of the photos.

A Greeting from Dickens 

Merry Christmas from Dickens-A Greeting Card Created with CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler

Pat decided to simplify the Christmas tree this year and just used poinsettias and red and white stockings with the first initials of family members. Using CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler I created a greeting card with Dickens. (Dickens, our Westie, was actually named after Charles Dickens of Christmas Carol fame.) First, I cropped and color corrected the original photo. Here is the before and after comparison.

When taking the photos I experimented with using both flash and a couple of natural light fluorescents. This shot was taken with the fluorescents which created some undesirable shadows that I didn’t want in the photo. The color was fixed with the OneClick feature in CorrectPhoto.  The next step was to add the text with ImageTitler, a process I wrote about in a previous post on creating greeting cards.

Special Effects with Color

Special effect Black and White photo created with iCorrect EditLab ProApp

I then decided to get a little creative and by using PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab ProApp I made the black and white with color accent photo above.  Here is the screen shot of EditLab ProApp.

PictoColor's iCorrect EditLab ProApp Screen Shot for special effect

Using the one click auto black and white feature I first converted the photo into B&W.  Since the color information is still retained I then click on one of the red stockings to select the hue (color) I wanted to restore.  It only took a couple of seconds to do this using iCorrect EditLab ProApp.  It is a standalone application that was created for digital photographers with lots of photos to color correct and it probably overkill for most amateurs. But, if you use Photoshop or Elements there is a plug-in version, iCorrect EditLab Pro plug-in that is great for making fast and accurate color corrections special effects like the Christmas greeting example.

Lessons learned
The primary point of this post is to suggest or remind you to take photos of things like holiday decorations so you won’t forget what you did. Your spouse will thank you. The second point is that you can have creative fun with the photos you take.

Well, if you have been watching the weather in the US you know that the upper Midwest is getting hit with significant snow falls during the Christmas holiday and many people will have to cancel holiday plans and stay home or at least delay their departure. In Burnsville, MN we had 7 inches overnight and expect up to 20 inches before it stops on Saturday.  I usually can’t resist taking snow pictures so you might see a few in a future post.  If you find yourself stranded this weekend and you get bored why not sit down at your computer and edit and organize your photos.

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

Wayne www.correctphoto.com