My daughter

[gtaz]

I like this photo of my daughter, but the highlights are blown. Taken on a sailboat on Lake Tahoe. I only use Picasa to edit, as it is all I have, besides iphoto. Any ideas? All help is truly appreciated:o Also, hope I'm posting this correctly:confused:

[Pat]

Unfortunately, gtaz, it's impossible to bring back detail that's not there, which is the case with blown highlights (if there is retrievable detail they're not really blown). When shooting on a bright sunny day it's probably a good idea to underexpose a stop or two and compensate in post production.
Having said all that, I'll just add that I don't think the minimal BH's here are a particular detriment. It's a very nice pic nonetheless.

[gtaz]

Thanks, Pat. I'm learning so much from this site and truly appreciate the feedback.

[StephenK]

Hi Gtaz :^)

Pat is right about the details that are truly blown out are unretrievable, and he's also right about it being a very nice picture.
I may revisit this image later but for now I was wanting to explore what could be done in short order.

You've taken a very nice picture of your daugher... well done! :)

[gtaz]

Hi Stephen K. I like what you did. What did you do???:confused: I appreciate the feedback and I am here to learn. Thank you. Gail

[StephenK]

Thank you Gail! :) And I would love to detail what I did in the edit! But I'm not sure what Picasa is able to do compared
to photoshop...? Does Picasa work with layers, and/or blending modes?... I'm afraid that much of what I explain may not be available for you to follow...:confused:

There's a free program called "gimp" that supports a lot of what photoshop does. I've never used it but I've seen others who
have and swear by it.

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

There's an installer for both Windows and Mac at the above link... but it's still fairly complicated to get started I've
been told.... :^(

If you should get ahold of a copy of photoshop we can go into this in some depth... I love teaching others as I
love being taught....! I've been plowing through photoshop for almost a year now and I can say with a warm smile that it's
quite the challenge....!

[gtaz]

Again, many thanks. Picasa is very basic; no layering or anything like that. I will try gimp and see how I do and will come back here with my questions. Thanks for the advice.

[StephenK]

Again, many thanks. Picasa is very basic; no layering or anything like that. I will try gimp and see how I do and will come back here with my questions. Thanks for the advice.

You're very welcomed Gail!

The three things you want to look out for and learn early-on is:
the ability to Mask effectively...
learning how to work with Adjustment Layers...
and, my biggest personal favorite... become familiar with the magic behind Blending Modes!

Those three alone will keep you busy in your studies for some time! I'm not sure how helpful I will
be in your ability to tame gimp, but I do know that gimp supports all three of these, from what I've
seen others do in the past.

This looks like a good forum to start with in learning gimp:

http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/

And above all have fun! I simply love this process!! :^)

[gtaz]

StephenK. Sorry I've been absent, I'm in the midst of moving to another state! I'll have to put the photography aside until I get myself settled. Thanks for your instruction; I can't wait to start experimenting. :p

[StephenK]

StephenK. Sorry I've been absent, I'm in the midst of moving to another state! I'll have to put the photography aside until I get myself settled. Thanks for your instruction; I can't wait to start experimenting. :p

No problem at all Gail! Good luck with your move! We're in the process of moving from the eastern part of Washington state to
the western side... but this move will likely take us about a year or two to complete (long story :^)

When I saw your message it reminded me to go back to the picture of your daughter
and to see what else would creatively take shape with her image.

I started playing with capturing the luminance values, and from there creating a mask that
I could then add FX effects to... in an adventure to see what could happen.

The variables are fascinatingly-promising with this approach! ....but you would need to know a bit more about editing
before I could explain it in a way that made sense.

And speaking of which, there is one other suggestion that I'd like to make considering you're wanting to learn more about
how to do editing.... Some time ago I decided to forgo plug-ins.. I did so for "purest" reasons. I found that when
I would apply some plug-in "something" would happen... and yet I didn't know exactly what that "something" was.

So instead of relying on plug-ins to do things mysteriously I decided to learn this process from the ground up. Most of what plug-ins do
is to animate the processes that are already an integral part of photoshop, or whatever program the plug-in
is written for.

It's so "much" harder to learn editing this way but in the long run you'll be sooooo much better-off for the
in-depth experience. :) This is just something I like to suggest as an option to fellow editing students... :^)