I ♥ Photoshop!

I'm finding out that a HUGE aspect of digital photography is the post processing, or editing done AFTER you take the picture. Photoshop is AmAZiNg! There are so many things you can do to improve your photos (of course, the goal is to get them as close to perfect to begin with). I've been learning more about the different tools in Photoshop and playing around with actions I've found on-line. "Actions" are basically several steps already put together to make one effect. This photo is my most recent play:

SOOC (Straight Out of Camera -- that's a new acronym I learned in all of my photography studying):

Cute kid, but not so great photo -- kind of dark.

This is what you get with most basic photo editing programs when you turn a photo to black & white:

And THIS is a black and white action from Pioneer Woman (My newest favorite photography site):

How cool is that?


This one I ran several actions on and played around with a bit myself:

He has some blotchy red in his skin that I probably should have smoothed out a bit, but I'm still thrilled with how much better it looks than the original.

I've been saving my blog design money to decorate my house with, but I'm thinking I might just need to invest in some more photography equipment instead.