Use Photoshop to clean up your baby
Zac of Baby Roadies posted a couple impressive examples of how a little Photoshop retouching can greatly improve baby pictures. Ugly car seat warning labels? Errant spitup? Gone with a flick of the cursor.
If only it worked in real life.
Reminded me of a past post on Shooting The Kids about the same topic, but Amy includes a little how-to as well.
By the way, most of us amateur photographers don't need to spring for the full version of Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop Elements (Mac OSX or Win XP) a lightweight, easier-to-use version, will work just fine.
Tags: Digital photography, Parenting, Photography, Photoshop
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We sent a holiday photo one year showing off the fabulously clean grout in our tub (and a kid with a Santa hat and bubblebath beard). There is no better product for tub cleaning out there than Photoshop!
Posted by: Jill | 23 January 2007 at 12:02 PM
I would also point out a couple of other free photo editors. Many of these are Windows only, but some have Open Source (multi-platform) versions as well.
The only one of these that I have used extensively is the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
VCW Vicman's photo editor:
http://www.vicman.net/vcwphoto/index.htm
Paint.net
http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html
I haven't used this, but it is consistently mentioned favorably in tech articles.
Serif Software makes older versions of its software available for free in hopes of enticing users to buy the newer versions. Photoplus 8 is currently free after registration.
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp
The GNU Image Manipulation program. I use this all the time.
http://www.gimp.org/windows/
If you are accustomed to Photoshop's menus, perhaps the retooled GIMPshop would be more to your liking. It is the same program, but with menus that mirror those of Photoshop.
http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294
I hope these help.
Posted by: Jim | 23 January 2007 at 12:39 PM
I use Photoshop Elements all the time to touch up family pictures. The rule is that you can't change the baby -- just the stuff that's on him.
Most of the changes are basic color fixups since a little bundle of impatience isn't going to wait for me to get the right f-stop or turn on the right light. This has led to getting a lot more good pictures of the 2000+ we've shot in the first 10 months. For a particularly good picture (composure/light) I'll take some extra time to fix things like drool. We still have plenty of pictures that show that he's been a drool machine for the last several months, but now we also have a few cleaned up shots that we could frame for Christmas.
It takes extra time, but one weekend afternoon a month isn't bad for the memories that we get from it.
Posted by: Steve S. | 23 January 2007 at 02:29 PM
I don't want to scare anyone off from using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. They are fabulous programs. I got a copy of Elements(older now) that came with my Wacom digital art pad a couple of years ago and I love it!
By all means, buy it and use it if you can (and use Asha's link when you do).
The best thing about the Adobe Photoshop tools are that they are well documented. So you can probably find good tutorials and guides that cover everything you could want to do with them from novice to guru levels at your local book stores and libraries. That's especially helpful when you are new to the whole digital photo editing business or are trying to take your skills to the next level.
I just wanted to point out a couple of alternatives for those that might not be able to take that specific hit to the pocket book just yet.
Posted by: Jim | 23 January 2007 at 10:55 PM
Jim: YES! I'm so glad you posted those links. Just the sort of helpful comment I love seeing. I'm too photographically challenged to know which free programs are worthwhile and I'm thrilled to know there are good alternatives.
Posted by: Parent Hacks Editor | 23 January 2007 at 11:15 PM
For basic operations like red eye removal, rotating, and cropping, light level adjustments and so forth, I should have mentioned Google's Picasa program (http://picasa.google.com). I don't use it myself, as Adrienne is the photographer in the family, but she gets a lot of use out of it and some those standard fixes turn out very nicely and are easy to implement with the program.
Bonus: It is also free.
Posted by: Jim | 24 January 2007 at 06:59 AM
I second the recommendation of Picasa. I use Photoshop at home but installed Picasa on my parents' and sisters' computers so they can easily do basic photo editing on their own.
The bonus for me is that it's made it more likely that they'll e-mail me photos in a timely fashion. (:
Posted by: oddharmonic | 24 January 2007 at 03:55 PM
I don't like the idea of changing photos like this. I like the idea of all the ugliness of life being documented as well as the beautiful.
It just seems too much like trying to re-write history.
Posted by: Fish | 25 January 2007 at 08:34 AM