Giving Your Photos Impact With a Little Editing
One of the questions we are asked most often is how we get such unusual, often "painterly" effects with our photos. At the Olympia Art Walk last month, people were surprised to find out that the image below was a photo printed on canvas, not a painting.
The answer to this question is post production editing. Michelle and I both use Lightroom and a number of plugins (photo editing software) to achieve various effects. The Boat Shop photo was edited in Lightroom then in Nik Software's Color Efex Pro, my "go to" editing plugin. Take a look at this short video to get an overview of its features.
We also use Topaz Labs' software collection, and most recently I purchased Topaz Impressions, a wonderful tool to create interesting effects. I used Impressions with the two photos below to turn ordinary scenes from my walks into ones with impact.
This week I purchased Topaz Labs' newest photo editor, Topaz Texture Effects. I watched a tutorial this weekend and was amazed at its capacity! As with Impressions, it can be used as a stand-alone photo editor, or with Lightroom or Photoshop. This short video gives a great overview of what it can do.
I played around with its presets created by Topaz, as well as some created by people in the larger community, and was able to come up with some fun shots.
You can create "grungy type" of photos, such as the one below. The original photo was okay, but with Texture Effects, I now have a photo that tells a story.
For those who like to start with a clean slate, you can create your own look by using the many layers built into the software. After watching the tutorial I was able to produce the image below.
As we have written before, photography is 50% capturing the shot and 50% editing to get the image we want to share. These are just some of the post production tools that can help give more impact to your photos, and let the artist within you emerge. Let us know what tools you like to use by commenting below, posting on our Facebook page, or sending us an email. We love hearing from you, so grab your camera and go out Camera Wallking!
