I find that, sometimes, taking the color out of a photo makes it better. Not that there was much color in this image to begin with. These are steeples and the bell tower at Fontevraud abbey. The sky and the slate roofs came out with a blue tint. Just toning down the blue didn't do much for me, so I took all the color out, adjusted the contrast a little, and I like the shot much better.
When I first switched over to digital photography, I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to adjust my photos. I didn't do anything fancy, just cropping, rotating to fix bad angles, and applying some color and lighting adjustments. These days, I'm shooting in RAW format and using Adobe Lightroom to "develop" the images before exporting them to the JPG format for posting on the blog. I'm sure that I don't use Lightroom to its full potential, but not being a professional, it doesn't matter much. There are people on the internet that offer tutorials and hints for using the software and most of what I've learned has come that way.
I shot these older images from Fontevraud with a pocket camera in JPG format. That means that the camera's internal software made the "developing" choices for me and that there was less "information" in the photo to manipulate later. The RAW format gives me a lot more control. Still, many problems just can't be fixed with software. It helps to take a good photograph in the first place. I'm still working on that.
The photo is beautiful in B&W. I tried following a Lightroom tutorial during a really low point for me in recent months. It couldn't even figure out how to open the photo I wanted and got so frustrated with myself that I haven't touched it since. You need to drop by and get me started.
ReplyDeleteIt is a great photo. Now I feel my photos must be really bad. I point, zoom or not, maybe change the photo angle to get the right auto focus and lighting, click and publish. Occasionally I will crop a photo. Thanks for giving me an understanding of the reason for shooting in RAW.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful photo. The only raw thing I know is/are crudités.
ReplyDeletemitch, LR's file management system is not very intuitive and it took me a while to figure it out. I still have problems with it. Maybe it's me.
ReplyDeleteandrew, good photos are not dependent on equipment or software. I read that all the time. Then I start shopping for something new.
bettyann, mmmmm, crudités...