correctmyphotos

Why not turn your average snapshots into great photos?  All it takes is a little photo editing.  Here is a video promoting PictoColor’s CorrectPhoto Editor that includes some excellent examples of what cropping and color correction can do to make your mediocre photos outstanding.

You can find out more about photo editing and how easy it is at www.correctphoto.com.

Wayne,  www.correctphoto.com

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

Merry Christmas Greeting

Earlier this week we woke up to 7 inches of new snow in Burnsville, MN. This was our first real snow this winter and while it created a miserable commute for many it certainly help put us in the holiday mood. And, of course, I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of our house which I recently decorated for the season and creating a greeting card. I wrote about creating greeting cards a couple of weeks ago so I won’t go into detail in this post. Of course I used CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler to quickly edit the photo and add the text. Here is another card using a different shot of the house.

Christmas card greeting created with CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler

 As I have said many times, virtually all digital photos need to be cropped, color corrected and this is particularly true of photos you might want to use for a greeting card.  The above greeting card examples are no exception.  Both need to be cropped and color corrected and here is the before and after of the above house photo. Note how dull and lifeless the original photo is. I took the photos on a cloudy morning and the color is typical of snow photos taken under those conditions. But, as you can see, they can be easily turned into a good looking photo with a photo editor like CorrectPhoto or Photoshop Elements.

House photo was cropped and color corrected with CorrectPhoto

The greeting text was added with ImageTitler.

Add greeting text to photo with ImageTitler

 Why not use one of your photos to create a unique greeting card to send to your friends this holiday season. It is easy and fun to do and anyone can do it.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Wayne www.correctphoto.com

ImageTitler™ 3.2 by PictoColor
In my previous post, “Create Your Holiday Photo Greeting Card in Minutes“, I mentioned a program called ImageTitler. PictoColor just released ImageTitler 3.2, an updated version of this simple way to add titles and text to photos. The new version has more fonts and colors to choose from and increases the sizing flexibility.

ImageTitler is really a very simple program to learn and, frankly, gives the impression that it is a “tinker toy” application.  The quality and sharpness of the the text on a photo is really excellent and the speed with which you can title a photo is impressive. Yes, if you have and know how to use Photoshop or Elements you can do much more with text than you can with ImageTitler. However, most of us either do not know how to use Elements or find that it is too time consuming.  Therefore, ImageTitler is the answer to simply add text to a photo. I took this photo of my granddaughter on Thanksgiving, cropped and color corrected it with CorrectPhoto and added the simple title with ImageTitler and was finished in a few minutes.

Photo cropped and color corrected with CorrectPhoto and titled with ImageTitler

ImageTitler Process
The simple steps to add text to a photo is as follows:

Happy Holidays from Dickens
You can create your own holiday greeting cards in a few short minutes. Well, maybe we’ll start the timer after you decide on the photo you want to use. That might take a bit longer. For this example I chose a photo I took of Dickens last Christmas wearing his Santa outfit. (He really wasn’t crazy about wearing it, but was a good sport about it.)

Create your own greeting card-Dicken's had some help creating his

 Step 1-Edit the photo
As I have said many times, every photo needs to be cropped and color corrected and this shot is no exception. I used CorrectPhoto to crop the photo using the 4×6 cropping format. I chose not to center Dickens so I could add the greeting on the right side of the photo. Using the OneClick color correction feature I clicked on the white portion of his hat and I was done.

Crop and color correct the photo-I used CorrectPhoto Editor

Step 2-Add Greeting Text to Photo
To add the text I used PictoColor’s ImageTitler because it is so simple (I still have difficulty using Photoshop Elements to add text to photos and it takes too long.)

Add Titles and Text to Photos with ImageTitler by PictoColor

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