Touch-Ups!

A few days ago I posted a look at some of the edited photos I took my first time ever using a DSLR camera. I suppose I did these posts backwards or should have just combined them, but today I'm going to show you the unedited shots and really a side-by-side comparison with the edited ones to show what I'm very slowly learning to do in Photoshop!

I've still been playing around with the edits, but here are a few of my favorites so far.  I think it really shows that just a few small changes can clearly make a big impact on any photo.

Original Picture on the Left   ---   Photoshop Edit on the Right

This first set was a fairly simple edit.  I adjusted the levels and set an s curve.  I also cropped it slightly to hide an ugly green ribbon hanging off the end of one of the branches.  My editing skills aren't that great for actually removing items from photos yet!

This one was a little more fun.  Along with adjusting levels and curves, I adjusted the color balance to bring out more red in the sand.  I also adjusted the brightness/contrast to make the sky really pop out of the little pool of water.

Same thing here.  I just love how much of a difference you can get with a simple curve.  Adjusting the color balance can make just the right thing pop too.  I feel like I'm transported to the beach here except that these are rocks instead of shells, and it's more mud instead of sand!

Here's where I got a little crazy and actually tried removing objects from the photo.  I love the train tracks, but there were just way too many signs and things that stuck out.  Some of them I just blurred and obviously cropped out the big billboard.  The spot-healing brush helped with a lot of the little pieces, probably garbage littering the tracks.  

I have so much still to learn, but I'm amazed how much much a few mouse clicks can already do!  I'm off to look up some more tutorials and see what else I can do with these pictures!