Avoidable Design Disasters Series—Photographs
Last week we discussed Avoidable Design Disasters that focused on journaling. Today we will talk about photographs and a few simple things you can do—or not do—to keep them from being a design distraction on your beautiful scrapbook pages.
I am no photo expert. In fact, I tend to avoid photo editing like the plague. However, I will not allow myself to get away with a few things. This is my Top 3 list of Avoidable Photograph Design Disasters.
Crooked as a Jaybird
I can see how this happens. When taking this photo of my daughter (on the left), I was focused on her and the pole she’s leaning up against. It didn’t even occur to me to look at the horizon. Lucky for me, I do not have to pay attention while getting the shot. Photoshop can fix me up quick!
No horizon in your photo? You’re not off the hook quite yet. Besides straightening things horizontally, there are many things that should always be vertical in your photos, such as, buildings, trees, and telephone poles. Even people typically don’t lean.
How To Fix It: Take 30 seconds to rotate your photo using the Straightening tool, or use a Guideline or the Grid as a guide when rotating your photo manually.
Gloom & Doom
I was happy with the exposure of my original photo . . . until I saw the corrected version! Yikes!
How To Fix It: Not sure if your photo needs correction? Try clicking on the Autocorrect options in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. You might be surprised by what you find. From there you can tweak things till you come up with something you like.
Stretched & Squished
When trying to fit your photo into a frame or photo mask, you might be tempted to give it a little stretch here or a little squish there. Not a good move. Your subject is likely to resemble an alien life form.
How To Fix It: Keep your frames and photos proportional by only resizing from the corner handles of the Bounding Box.
Here is my scrapbook page before and after I made the three edits to my photo. It took me less than two minutes to make the edits. I just might have talked myself into becoming an editor of photos!!
How about you? When leafing through the galleries, what photographic mistakes stick out to you as Design Disasters? I’ve only covered three, but I bet we could make a list of three thousand!
Jen White
jen@digitalscrapper.com
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My biggest blue is lighting. My photos always turn out too dark, shadows in the wrong place, sunlight distorting the lot. I’m sad – boohoooooooo . . . . .
Thanks for your great tips, Jen. I always notice a crooked horizon on layouts. And dark photos drive me crazy. Many people make beautiful pages with lovely paper and element designs and add a ‘too dark’ photo so you can’t appreciate the subject. I often lighten a photo and then when it is in the layout I lighten it again.
Thanks for these tips, Jen. No matter how long we’ve been scrapbooking, we forget about some of the tools available. I spent so much time on my most recent layout because the shadow from the patio cover made a good picture impossible to get. I posted it to my Gallery. Today I redid the bottom picture using only the auto Smart Fix(PSE)and a little shadow/highlight adjustment. SO MUCH EASIER and quicker! Thanks!
http://digitalscrapper.com/forums/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=5097
Funny thing is that I *love* “playing” with my photos. I could play all day and never get a page done, LOL! It’s just amazing how you can change the mood of a photo with various blending modes in PS. What often trips me up is how different photos look on my computer versus someone else’s computer. What looks bright to me might look dark somewhere else, or vice versa. My test is printing. If it looks good in print, I leave it as is, regardless of how it looks on my friends’ monitors.
I, too, go crazy over crooked horizons or trees/buildings/people! Good #1 tip!! With today’s digital darkrooms, we can so easily fix that – it’s a shame to leave oceans poised to empty out of one side of the frame 😉
HAHA. So true.
I love this new series. These 3 steps brought you photo from good to great. i can think of several of my photos that can be saved with these.
I notice you used a photo mat. Hmmm. That could rescue some of my disasters.
I wished I had seen this BEFORE my husband took the pictures of us on the beach in Florida! lol (it seems our horizon was always just a tad bit slanted).
I would love to know how you put the journaling on your layout! I really like your touched-up layout. Thanks.
Thanks for your kind words, Jan!
Referring to the “Beach Beauty” text on the layout, this is how I did that:
• Create two lines of large type above the entire layout.
• Reduce the Opacity of the type layers.
• Simplify the type layers.
• Use the Eraser tool to erase away parts of the type you don’t want to show.
I only erased the type that covered my daughter.
I have a friend whose camera makes a blue cast on all her photos. Drives me nuts! Since I am making a yearbook for her grade 2 class of their main projects and class trips, I have to fix every one of them! Good job it’s fixable!
Thanks, Jen, for your tips!
Sounds like a big undertaking, Jinny! Have you tried doing batch processing on all the images at the same time? Batch processing is perfect for situations like yours – where all the photos will need the same adjustment. 😀
Thanks for the great tips and ideas. I am new to photoshop and only just getting the courage and understanding to change my photos. I am learning one thing at a time so I can commit it to my memory, so thanks for the blog it’s a great asset to me.