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PhotoGene 4: Tips and Tricks

It's one thing to actually take images with your iphone success it's another thing to enhance them and get them printed. So in the next half of the class, we're going to talk about how you could do that directly from your phone, which is really cool he used to be back in the day you'd have to download the images off your phone bringem indyk some kind of photo editor like I photo or something like that on your mac computer and then at the photos from their upload them to your printer and go from there. Well, nowadays you can do it all directly from your phone. Why? Well, because there's, an app for that photo jeannie for is the app that I used in the app that I love the most now there's tons of them out there, and I'm going to give you a full, comprehensive list of some fun ones that a lot of other professionals use for their own snapshots. But for me, photo jeannie for gives me the most leeway, the most flexibility, and it has some perks and bells and whistles and on it that I don't us...

e every time, but they are fun to use filters things like that as well as complete manual control over the enhancement of your images, which is what I really want to teach you in this section of the class not just applying some blanket filter to something, but actually really studying the image, finding out what it needs and enhancing it with more of a manual emanuel style. Okay, so it's basically an advanced anything app for your image is what we're going to be focusing on today with our images that we've photographed is exposure, color, temperature. So is the image leaning like more magenta tone or cool blue? Or is it too warm that kind of thing? Curves helps you really kind of define the highlights and shadows and your images, and for those of you who don't know what curves is, don't worry too much about the terminology. I don't want you to get hung up on that, but I am going to show you how curves works. It is a professional function that almost all professional photographers use on their images, but don't get too hung up about what that is, because it's not super advances that you can easily and intuitively use. But I am going to teach you how to brighten up your images and really increase the contrast using the curse function inside thirty four we're going talk about basic retouching, so you know if there's red eye in your images or something there that you want to take out, uh forty four will actually allow you to do that now, it's not as intuitive or is easy is doing it in a professional program like photo shop, but it is possible to do it, which is what makes you know, that's kind of what I would have the fun is we're going talk about cropping and how just simply cropping an image can improve the composition and the overall appeal of the image, and we're also gonna discuss finally, how you sharpen an image for output, and then beyond that, we're going to start discussing aps that will allow you to upload your images directly to a professional level printer and it's really important that you do print professionally because professional images are archival, they will last, their high quality and the color is superb compared to more consumer level labs, you know, drugstore type laps. So the ap said, I'm going to show you for printing are awesome, they're you know, just a simple is prince all the way up to incredible books and albums aa lot of fun and of course, it gets the images off your phone and into is a printed format that everybody can enjoy so let's start editing and show you what are the some of the fun things you can do with your images to really enhance them. One of the joys about shooting with your iphone success is that there are acts that allow you to edit so we're going to go ahead and add it some of the images that we shot for this class starting off with soul on the brick wall sitting on this white couch now if you remember correctly of course saw was a very black dog and the couch was very white so she looks a little dark now there is some detail of course in her for but I want to bring that out a little bit more because you can't really see the highlights and stuff in her in her for as well as I would like so we are in photo jeannie for now you could just go directly to filters and apply a bunch of fun filters on there if you wanted to but I want to take this a step further for you guys and really teach you some of the fun things you can do in your images on keeping the integrity of the image without just applying a blanket filter on top of it. So inside photo jeannie foreal notice I pressed the little wrench icon here and I have several different options I can crop rotate, adjust there are presets aiken retouch I can add text to my images or I can enhance when I enhance I could do things like vignettes, frames, stuff like that reflections you can get pretty crazy actually a few frames it's almost a little overkill if you want but when I first like to start out with is going to the adjust feature because this is where I'm going to do global changes to the image now clarity is going to increase the contrast ratio in the mid tones of your image brightness is going to increase the overall exposure of the image so I can increase the exposure but you'll notice that my sofa starts to get really bright and almost out of control and I don't want that to happen I just want to bring up and enhance some of the shadows colors, colors, air pretty good. The iphone did a pretty good job, but aiken saturate colors if I want to make that brick wall a little bit more red or aiken d saturate things down a little bit which I actually prefer somewhat vibrant tends to kind of just increase the overall tonality the color it doesn't really actually add saturation to the hue of the color itself then there's things like white balance if I want this image to be a little cooler add more blue if I want to be warmer I can add more warmth to it the color temperature and the white balance features this is pretty much like professional editing software this is the same feature you would find and say photo shop or adobe camera the shadow highlights is where I wanted to be. I want a light, my shadows. So if you see me, I can pop this up and you can see the shadows start to come alive and we can see the shadows inside. Saul here begin tio bright a little bit, so there they are as they were as they were shot like that, and then I can go ahead and open them up a little bit and start to brighten up my shadows so that you could start to see the detail and the fur of saul. I can also should I need to darken my highlights. Now sometimes if you're harlots air blown out like mine are in the window, it just makes that look funky, so you don't want to overdo this feature too much. You could definitely tone down your highlights if your images too bright on make for an image that has a full range of both shadows and highlights and also sharpened. I took a sharp into the very last thing I do a d noise, that pixel ization that you get with images that were shot in the dark. You know how sometimes they can look really grainy, well, that d noise will help you kind of get rid of that. The history graham tells you if you've under over exposed your image, so if you see your blacks begin to get too far over this side, which is represented by this side of the history ram, then you know you're blacks have no detail on them enough, you know, not usually the best for printing same over here on the right with the whites. I can even brighten up my whites if I want to buy moving my history ram over, but this right side of the history ram represents the whites in your image, and you can make them a little brighter, a little poppier just by moving this around here. But you don't want your whites toe hit the table, so to speak and that's basically professional speak for the history and being all the way over here to the right, and you're really bad blown out highlights that doesn't make for a good printed image, so use your history ram as information you could affect color as well as curves, and I had told you guys about curves earlier. Curves is definitely a professional feature, but curves allows you to adjust, highlight and shadow on a curve so you can either do it globally with the red, blue and green channel all addressed in the image. Or you can hit just your read channel and adjust the curves in just the reds and the image, or just the greens and the image to create a different color effect or overall to fetch the grays and whites and really kind of bring out the shadows. Even more bumpier highlights even more for really nice contrast e image and, of course, there are some presets two curves down here at the bottom dynamic lightened darken on those air, just kind of automatic adjustments that the app will apply for you. But for the most part, those are the things that are global changes that you want to adjust to your image, to really create a new image that pops and does so beautifully, and we'll print well as well to get an image that prince well, you want your whites to not be too blown out, you want your blacks to be have detail in them, and that will create a well printed image if you have blacks that are really dark and there's no detail, the print's going to turn out the same way, and it won't be as strong of an image. So once I've done that, I will go ahead and actually went before I do that, I'm going to go ahead and, um crop a little bit because this side of the sofa over here I'm not really a big fan of sowing in the take that out here someone just my crop line so that I just have my crop that part of the sofa off and then I'm gonna widen my image that I increased get the entire sofa on the other side and I put as you can see, my grid showed up again when I decided to crop and I want to put saul there on that lower left power point so to me I like that image it looks good gonna go ahead and press the scissors and that crops it gives them a little bit of a cleaner look now once I've cropped I've done my global adjustments now it's time to go back to a just one more time and oops start sharpening the image so I'm going to go over here to sharpen and sharpen is what's really going to give you good clear, crisp images for the output? Ok, so I usually put my sharpened radius at no more than than one you can see here I've got it at point three four which is even starting to get high on on iphone type image but once I have my sharpened radius where I wanted then I sharpen the amount and you can see solid start the detail and saul starting to come out a little bit and sometimes you can over sharpen image so I'll go ahead and over sharpen it and you can see how you get little like artifact ing in your highlights and things start to get all funky and weird like all are really over sharpen it you can kind of see what I'm talking about here, but you don't want to get to the point where your images look fake or over process as we call it in the in the professional industry that's super important so keep your shirt obviously you want to sharpen some but you don't need to sharpen so much that it loses the image loses its integrity so there you have it there's a cute little image of missile I've brought up the shadows a little bit so my contrast isn't quite as deep in the image but I actually like it that way I think it looks pretty good and this's an image her mama would definitely be proud of. So once you're done, you can go ahead and, uh export it either to you can resize it uh you could even put a watermark on it if you want to and a time date stamp you can save it to your library, which all then take it from there and send it to my lab tio have it printed okay, okay, next I want to talk about this um it's going to start talking about this food shots? Food shots are really fun because you can open up the shadows but also increase the saturation to really make an incredible image, so I'm gonna go ahead and again going to adjust uh, I got a grand brightened things a little bit at some vibrance you can see already the food's starting to take a life of their own. I'm going to go ahead and increase my exposure just a touch not too much and want the plate to get all weird on me. There we go white balance looks pretty good, I'm gonna go ahead and light my shadows just a touch to really make the food come alive and you can see here in the shadow area that's where the the food is starting to look really appetizing for for lack of a better word, but combine that with a little saturation and a little sharpening, and we're gonna have a really neat image, so I'm going to go ahead and increased my sharpening radius sharpen the image and you can see once I sharpen the image, the highlights especially those like in the berries, are starting to pop out, and that makes for a really neat image, so of course I could apply filters to this and, you know, really make it kind of cool and neto but so often these days filters air overused so I'd be really careful about applying like vintage effects or you know selective color where only the berries are only the reds and the image or showing everything self is black and white because some of that stuff starts look dated and is over kills so just be wary of that and be conservative with it and you'll go a lot longer distance with your images and honestly they'll print better so I tend to not dio filters too much because I don't wanna I don't wantto overdo it so that they'll print correctly ok and here's this image of casey we're going to go ahead and do similar effects to that one I'm gonna increase the clarity on this one you see how that kind of made a little more edgy I'm gonna go ahead increased my exposure reduce my contrast just a touch uh colors let's go ahead and add some vibrance to it so the greens really pop out and then I'm going to bring up my shadows just a touch just so we can see the detail and then I'm going to go in and enhance it with a vignette vignettes air really neat you can actually dark in the edges of your image to make that focus go more towards the subject now when you do it like this it's going to just do the edges you can actually do a manual then yet where you get my radius down. Were you actually control the opacity? And the radius as well is where that radius is located. You should be able to move it here. There it is, a little dot in the middle. Sometimes I miss it. I can put that right over. Casey, make the radius go a little bit further and then increase the capacity or not of that. And that makes your I kind of go on to casey rather than onto the distracting elements around him in the city. So I'd be somewhat conservative with us. I actually made this vignette a little bit strong for him. It looks like there's a spotlight on him, but it's a great way to make the focus of your subject. Go more towards towards them and you could do the same thing with the blur as well. So keep that in mind a great radius a blur radius on. Of course, all these filters come into play as well. You could do reflections and frames around the image and really make things kind of fancy dancy if you want. Tio I like I said, I always tend to be a little conservative, but like the center focus thing could be really fun where again, not only are you making casey stand out more, but you're blurring the background so that he's, the one who is the focus of the image and I accidentally didn't didn't make that happen, but that's ok? Yes, it did. There it is so you can see now the trampoline is blurred out, casey's, the one who stands out and it really makes him kind of the center of the images rather than the city in the background. So lots of fun things you can do with your image is, of course, always remember to save and export them out of photo g on. Of course, you could even clone out certain distracting elements in an image it's a little challenging to do inside inside the software, but keep in mind it's there and it's all under the re touches category you can dodge and burn, you can clone you can heal. So if there's things, for example, that you don't want to see in an image, you can double tap and make the spot that she wanted to go away literally go away. Okay, so fun stuff to do. Clean up your images, make dark circles, go away, make distracting elements, go away and clone things out so that's more advanced photo jeannie, but overall, the key is to make your images pop, make your highlights and shadows where they need to be for printing. Increase the saturation of your images to make the colors pop and of course use vignette ing and soft focus around the outside edges to make your subject the one that truly stands out and your images and makes them worthy of being printed. So which is some simple enhancements you can really make your images shine, taking them from something that was just shot with the camera all the way up to being post process to really make your images look like they're done professionally and with some care other fun abs to check out that conduce um need things have a look of course that photo jeannie hips dramatic does some really cool vintage effects rana designs I really like because it allows you to put animations or graphic designs text neat sayings on top of your images first social sharing and or printing so rana designs is really creative, very crafty and fun, so check that out that's a good one snap seat, of course is a great editing app so is picked up go would camera is a camera app that gives again vintage effects. So back in the days when cameras were a lot older and gave you textured images and stuff that had light leaks and things like that would cameras good for that camera plus is a great more simple editing apt than photo jeannie for mixtures I love mixtures allows you to put textures on top of your imagery so it gives that grungy effect again light leaks old vintage flavor to your images mixtures is very neat and you can apply multiple textures on top of your images try not to go crazy because there is such a thing as too much less is definitely more after focus is a good one till shift generator both of those create out of focus backgrounds for you and that affect that makes the subject stand out so it either makes the foreground and the background or just the foreground and background go out of focus so that your subject really stands out and then finally pro camera pro camera actually takes over the functions of the iphone camera and it has some neat manual functions in it, so if you're maybe ah hobbyist photographer and you have a dslr and you want more control of your iphone camera poke pro camera will give you that, allowing you to shoot manually adjust the I s o just the shutter speed things like that which you can't really do on the iphone native camera, so keep that in mind there's really need aps out there they're fun to check out some of them are paid, some of them are free, but if you're an enthusiast like I am sometimes a dollar or two for a nap is nothing to have to have some fun so play around