I'm new to photo editing and learning the tricks of the trade by DexX's advice and personal experimentation. I thought it would be both fun and educational to start a thread devoted to technique.

For instance, I am borrowing a friend's digital camera for my Vegas trip that starts Sunday. It's super light sensitive though and reflects white like mad. Here's some proof (sorry about the file size, but I wanted to present it exactly as the camera saves it):

(Take my word for it: this is not bad photography on his part, but rather what the camera does to all light colors in images.)

So, I want to learn how to make this picture look decent, but I don't know the best way to do it. So, anyone who wants to can edit the picture and resubmit their improved picture, or even a failed attempt they don't understand, or whatever else. If more than one person does this, then chances are everyone will learn something, even the sooper eleet f0t0 h4><()rs.

So this isn't a compettition, it's a cooperation. A photoshopping hippy commune of sorts. Thought it would be a fun way to learn. If anyone's interested, just post an improved version of the above picture with an explanation of what you did. Or post another picture you want to see improved. Or whatever else you want. (There is no can't in hippy commune as the hippies sleeping in my tub like to say.)

I'm the one standing second from the right, by the way.

Sorry Obi, I tried, but I'm running 5.5 at home and I don't have all the filters I'm used to using.

The attempt I made was basically just as crappy, but at the other end of the spectrum, with far too much contrast and it looked overexposed. :-(

i got easy colour filters and balanceing thingies on my one. ill see what i can do.

I was thinking of using the burn tool then a lighter sponge tool to clean it up a bit, it could do with a slight Gaussian blur, but that's just my opinion.

Yeah, it's like, whoa! Hi-res photoshop batch compositing totally blows my mind.

Damn, Obi - you're only a few kilos heavier than me. Is this a post-wonder-diet pic?

I had a friend who was well over 250kg (550lb), and I suspect he may have hit 300kg at one stage. As such, it is hard for me to think of anyone else as being truly fat.

I'll wrangle the pic and post a new version in a little while.

A question for the Scots (and English?): How does one convert "stone" to "pound"?

There are 14lbs in a Stone.

My two attempts...

Your main problem is all the pure white in your original. Take a look at Obi's shirt, and the shirt of the woman to his right (his left from his perspective). Their shirts are mostly pure white, and there is no visible border between them. If the picture had been exposed properly, there would have been an edge there. The only way to put a border in is basically to hand-draw it - the washing out effect has eliminated a lot of detail, and a lot of colour information.

I suggest your friend takes his camera to be serviced, because no amount of photoshoppery is going to fix that pic.

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Damn, Obi - you're only a few kilos heavier than me. Is this a post-wonder-diet pic?

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In Photoshop... uh... whatever version I use... 6, I think...

(Menu) Image -> Adjust -> Brightness/Contrast...

Drop the brightness a bit, and it goes a bit grey, raise the contrast a bit to get rid of the greyness. Fiddle with both until you get the best possible result.

Then...

(Menu) Image -> Adjust -> Hue/Saturation...

Drop the lightness slightly (you'll know how much by looking at the preview) and raise the saturation a bit.

That's how I did the first one. The second one was a single hit of Image -> Adjust -> Auto Levels. Not a bad job for a single-click feature.

How do you guys cast shadows like that one in DexX's TOBOR edit? I feel that I could improve my edits drastically if I could do it.

I'm using Adobe Imageready 2.0 for the actual edit work, and save it in Photoshop 5.5, by the way.

I made the shadow manually. It is a copy of Tobor's layers, painted black, made 80% opaque and set to "multiply", distorted a bit to fit the wall, and slightly Gaussian-blurred.

Nothing to it... :P

Tobor isnt wearing his bunny slippers

SACRILEGE

Bunny slippers are house wear. D'uh...

Did a Combo of DexX's advice...
1. Under Image/Adjust - Auto Levels(Shft+Ctrl+L)
2. Under Image/Adjust - Brightness, changed to -7, Contrast, +22
3. Gaugassian Blur- Radius .3 pixles
The colors are still a little offset... should of adjusted hue.

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should of adjusted hue

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Around here we say should of, shoulda or should've.

Right fuzzy? Back me up on this.

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Around here we say should of, shoulda or should've.

Right fuzzy? Back me up on this.

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Okay, Nate, you asked for this....

"have done" is the present perfect tense of the verb "do". "should" indicates modality, and this particular mood requires the verb that it modifies to be in present tense, either imperfect the "do" or the perfect "have done". English is confusing in this regard because, although "have done" is two words, it is actually a single verb, and that verb's modality is affected by the preceding "should".

This confusion is compounded when English speakers create a contraction that involves only one word of the verb cluster. "should've" is formed when the weak "h" sound is entirely dropped, the the "a" is destressed to a shwa (represented by the upside-down "e", sounds like "uh") making something like "shood'uhv".

The problem after this is that some kids grow up saying "should've" and are never told that it is a contraction for "should have". When they have to write it down, they write it like it sounds, and it sounds like "should of", which makes no grammatical sense. This is the reason, in my opinion, for a lot of spelling and grammatical errors - people pronounce things incorrectly, and then try to write it as they say it.

Sorry, Nate, but you asked for that.

I blame the public school system.

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I blame the public school system.

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