If at first you don't succeed, try agian

I got a voice message one day from my cousin's wife asking me to do something for her, that was really for her husband. I was like, "Okkkaayyyy....???" (Yeah, I don't deal very well with the unknowns) When I called her back, she was wanting me to make a business card for him. I am farrrr from a graphic designer, but if someone believes I can do it, then I tend to believe for myself that I am fully capable.

When I thought I was done with the business card, I shared on Google+ the transformation from the original picture to the business card.

After the cards were ordered they wanted some new information added, and they mentioned that the font was a little small. I made those changes and just sent the cards off to be printed this morning.

But, boy, am I glad that I had a second chance at it, because now that I look at the original card and the one I made additions to... all I can think is "Umm... wow."

So here is the comparison, and you can see the difference for yourself.

Before and after, respectively

I'm sure that if I spent even more time on it/actually had some formal instruction in graphic design... I would change a lot more. But I'm happy to see the improvement in these two cards anyway.

-MarLeahJoy

Trash... or not

Sometimes when I'm culling through images it's really easy to see the things that are just plain yucky and just give the picture up as a dud. (Yucky = that hard shadow on the left, underexposure, uneven skin tones, etc.)
But, goodness, with Lightroom I cleared those things out of the way in less than 2 minutes with a little cloning, a preset, and a few hand edits.
After I do something like that to an image I always love looking at the before and after :)
And then when I do that, I feel like sharing. (mostly because I'm avoiding my homework) :P

-MarLeahJoy

Oh the Joys!

...of losing pictures.

I lost all of my pictures from the March to May of this year because I didn't have my mac yet. They were on another laptop and it crashed before I could get them off. :( 

Bye-bye to all of the pictures I took when I first got my camera... :'( {Thankfully I had really important ones on a flash drive... like a senior session. Whew!}

At least I have this blog that I have resized images on... and flickr has some original sized ones.

So I remembered this picture I wanted to find... and of course it was one of the thousands that I lost. So I had to download it from Flickr.

Great! ...with one small problem. It had my watermark on it! :/

So here's a little of what I had to do so I could use the picture again.

Not something I can do with all pictures, but thankfully this one worked and I can submit it into a little local contest.

"I will obliterate you, little watermark!"

Before - After

-MarLeahJoy

Cloning Faces in Lightroom

Yes, it can be done.

And yes, I'm super proud of myself.

So proud that I think I might reward myself by 

purchasing some presets.

-

(I was thinking of purchasing them 

anyway because they are 1/2 off from

Pure Actions for Photographers) ;)

(click on the picture to make it larger)

I cloned three faces. It was a slightly hectic, messy "workspace" on the 

picture, but it really didn't take too long.

And it is just expected that you won't always get a perfect picture

during a family session involving children.

So, this is what to do when you don't have Photoshop to solve the problem :)

-MarLeahJoy

Before/After Lightroom

quick, quick post here before I head out to meet up with some friends....

I've been editing some pictures from camp at Myrtle (I should post them soon, I've just got to leave now... :) )  and I ran across a picture I just snapped without adjusting any settings.

I had been told so many times by so many people that when you shoot in raw and edit in Lightroom you can restore so much to a picture.

Well, now I've seen it and believed it.

And I love it.

Thank you, Lightroom!

That's all.

MarLeahJoy