Purple Cast
May 11th, 2008Lura had a brief break in her schedule of quilting and teaching so she decided it was time to repair a couple of problems that were making it difficult for her to do both. After her double surgeries, one on her left foot and one on her right hand, she returned home from the hospital with a bright purple cast on her right hand.
Purple, as her students know, is her “neutral” and her cast matched the color of my truck. When we got home I took a few moments to record the event. We also wanted to send a quick picture via e-mail to family and friends.
My Nikon DSLR allows me to shoot both a JPEG and a RAW image. Since I would be using a JPEG for e-mail I chose to edit the JPEG after saving both formats on my computer’s hard drive. Then I did a quick and easy edit in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.
But to reduce my editing time in Elements I looked at what I was shooting. Before I shot the picture below I noticed that the sun behind me was casting a reflection on the truck directly in the middle of the frame. This direct light also made the color of the truck flat or washed out.
To get better color of the truck’s paint and to take the distracting reflection out of the center of the picture I moved to the left, changing the angle of the light. This showed the truck’s purple paint truer and reduced the reflection so it was not the main thing you saw in the photo.
Here is the JPEG, and the annoying reflections are circled in black which I moved to the left so they would not be so distracting before clicking the shutter.
The next problem with the image was with Lura sitting inside of the truck, she was in the shade and you could not see her face. Her arm on the leg with the surgery boot was a bit too dark as well.
Even though this was to be a quick picture for e-mail, as our students know, we
WORK ON DUPLICATES
so I made a copy and closed the original. This way the original JPEG was closed and not recompressed.
Here are the adjustments and how I made them to the original picture. Using the Editor in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, I first used Auto Smart Fix from the Enhance drop down menu. This lightened the picture a bit, but Lura’s face was still too dark.
Next, I used the Dodge Tool set on Midtones and at 50% Opacity to lighten her face and arm. At 50% Opacity you have more control of changes to the image.
Here is a screen shot of Elements and you can see the steps I took in the history menu at the right.
I renamed the picture and we sent it off to family and friends. Later, I resized this image to 200 ppi which made it 5 inches wide and printed it on our HP 8750 with HP Photo Paper. I printed it snapshot size on 4×6 paper for her mom, who does not have a computer.
Feel free to post any comments or ask any questions about how I did this working with Elements.
Cheers,
Kerby
www. thedigitalquilt.com