A (Small) Photo-Editing Tip

I figured out something new the other day, to help make my photos a bit better, and thought I'd share! Some (most? lol!) of you have probably already figured this out, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it's helpful...

So, I've been taking pictures of buttons lately. I take them outside, in bright light, and use my macro button so I can get up close and personal. Then I copy them into Picasa (wonderful free photo editing software!) and crop them.



I've noticed that they have a tendency to have a kind of grey cast to the background, though. Distressing! So, I did what I normally do with my photos that look a little dingy and went into the "basic fixes" section and hit the "autocontrast" button:


Hmm. Only a tiny bit better. So, how do I fix this photo? Then - tada! - I decided to venture over to the "Tuning" tab and played with the "Fill Light" "Highlights" and "Shadows" sliders a bit - and, hey, much better photo, and much better representation (at least on my monitor) of what the buttons actually look like.


My photos always need work, but it was fun to find out one little thing to do to make them a bit better. Hope this helps you, too!

Purple Scarf Needs Some Love - and Cordoba, Spain, for Something Completely Different

Well, phooey, my blogging roll ended with a resounding thud. So did Cyber Monday thus far. (Though last week went very well for my little Etsy shop!)

But, I did manage to take some better photographs of this poor purple scarf:

The poor thing was posted in my Etsy shop pretty early on - before I sort-of got the knack for taking ok pictures of textiles. So, it wasn't getting many views. Or maybe it's just a really homely scarf, lol! Poor purple scarf needs some love.

Natural daylight really does seem to work the best for me...

I have kind of an old digital camera - an Olympus C-3030. We bought it in September-ish 2000 to take on our honeymoon with us, and digital cameras were still pretty new then - and it was state of the art (and wicked expensive, no way would anyone pay $1000 for 3.3 Megapixels now, lol!!). Amazing how fast technology changes, isn't it?

At any rate, I remember we were in the Mosque in Cordoba (Spain), and this (American) guy walked up to me while I was trying to take pictures of the arches (beautiful) and was amazed at how you could see the photos *on the camera*! LOL And our kids will all grow up saying - you mean you had to wait to get the photos developed?? And what exactly *is* an "album"?



There are those beautiful arches. Also took this photo from the window of our hotel room in Cordoba:


Yup. travel bug is biting. Niece Timothea was in Paris this past week for her 30th birthday (she's living in the UK at the moment, lucky kid), took some *fantastic* pictures and has me all jealous.... Maybe by next fall Mr. Conall will be big enough to travel. Can't wait!