Photoediting Webinar

On Tuesday, courtesy of the EGA, I was able to participate in a webinar (Oh, how I hate that word! I feel like Elmer Fudd when I say it!) on photoediting.  Best Photo Forward: Refining Photos of Fine Embroidery was presented by Melissa Shanhun of DigitalScrapbookingHQ.com and Jen Weber of Funk & Weber.  The focus was on how to improve my digital photographs of needlework.  (You might remember Jen from the EGA Literacy Bookmark Program--I do, I spearhead it for my chapter and I'm still collecting bookmarks for Hammond Reads). (hint, hint)

I learned a lot. First off, the class was aimed at users of Photoshop Elements. I use Photoshop at work on occasion, but never have had any training--I just do what I've figured out. So, the first thing I learned is that I like Photoshop Elements. A lot. It is more straightforward than the full program. But I also learned about toolbars and items that are in the program I have, I'd just been ignoring them.

We learned how to resize photos to optimize them for the web.  What layers, how to work with them, and why they can be very handy tools.  How to get the image to show the true color (often distorted by the lighting available for the photograph). How to square a photo that's not quite true. How to add a frame around the needlework (Elements has premade frames). I also learned what a lot of terms mean and why you might want to do them (sharpen and flatten are two).

The hour went really fast!  I took notes (if I write it, I'll remember it much better--so I write a lot).

Next week, I'll have access to handouts and edited video so I can go over things again.  In the meantime I tried my hand using some of the techniques on some photos I took Wednesday morning.

This is the original shot.

And my shot with some trueing of the color and brightening.

This is the original of scilla in a neighbor's lawn.

And a brightened version. These lovely blue flowers are still too small to see. From a distance, their whole lawn looks bright blue!

This is a redbud. I didn't file the original with the edited one like I did the others.

And here's a quilt. This is a raffle quilt by the Prairie Star Quilter's Guild from St. Charles, IL; it's going to Paducah as a semifinalist and it will be raffled at their show on October 12-13 at the DuPage  County Fair Grounds. I've got my ticket and I'm gonna win. Just sayin'.  Notice the top edge is lopsided.

So I used my new knowledge and corrected the skew.  If you look closely, some of the center blocks are no longer quite square. It's still not quite unskewed--but the more I corrected for one thing, the more other things went a bit out of square. So I found what I think is a happy medium. Not perfect, but much better, imho.
Thank you to Melissa and Jen and, especially, EGA!