What we do with our photos after we get done shooting is the other half of our work. I was so resistant to switch to digital two years ago, but I can’t believe how the creative process has become so much richer. My creativity no longer has to stop with the framing and shooting. Brian and I even find ourselves shooting for Photoshop b/c we know exactly what we’re going to do with it in post process!

As you can imagine, we’ve found lots of wonderful tricks and plug-in’s along the way. I thought I’d share one of my favorite with you. Barb Uil in Australia is one of the most wonderful children photographers I’ve seen. Her website is www.jinkyart.com. Her blog is http://blog.jinkyart.com.au/index.php. She puts out a wonderful set of plug-in’s for photoshop to enhance your color in a beautiful, funky, saturated type way. I just wished she lived in the states!

Below is a good example of how I used her actions during post process. Here is the shot straight out of the camera. To dark, and I wanted to boost the color more b/c of how cute it was to have Blaze in Pascaline’s old pink/red snow suit and boots.

Here’s the shot after I used Barb’s actions! I upped the color but didn’t use the action to its full capacity, then I drew more focus to Blaze, and most important, faded out the random man walking in the background. We use Photoshop for our post process work. It’s a beast of a program, but if you want to learn it you can (believe me, if I can, you totally can!!). Check out Photoshop TV for Photoshop tips made easy! You won’t regret it!

Whatever software you have for post process, I encourage you to spend even 1 hour a week getting more familiar with it. The post process of color saturation, toning, brightness and contrast can awaken a whole different side to your creativity!

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Exercise for “Make Post Process Count”!

Defining the term “Action” (in my own words): Actions are what we use in Photoshop when we want to change the image in some way. Instead of having to first change the color, then the saturation, then the opacity, there are hundreds and hundreds of actions you can use to give you a look all at once when the Action is applied. It’s pretty amazing, and you can always modify the action to what you’re wanting. Hope this helps, and I didn’t want to leave those out of the conversation who aren’t familiar with the term Actions. On to our exercise!

1. Pencil an hour to yourself when the kids are at school or in bed and pick one photo that needs some color adjusting (to dark, to bright, you’d rather have it be black and white, etc).

2. If you are somewhat comfortable with Photoshop, try Barb’s actions at www.jinkyart.com. I rarely ever play actions and leave it as is. The actions often make the image a little more intense then I like, so I’ll click on the top background layer and adjust the opacity to calm the action down a bit. Experiment with the opacity and see what type of color saturation stands out to you.

3. If you don’t have Photoshop, commit to spending an hour this week on getting to know your post process software a bit better. Try removing the saturation from your image to make it black and white. Play with the contrast and brightness to add more drama to the image. Be careful not to burn out the faces when doing this. The “brighter” you make your whites the more information you lose on that image and it can look like you have a literal hot spot on the face. Not good, especially for printing quality.

4. If you have a Color Balance option, move the reds up a bit and the yellows down and create your own version of Sepia (brown toned black and white). I’ll usually move the red up to a +10 and the yellow to a -10 depending on the lighting of the shot. Play around with your own settings, discovering what brown tones you like best. Then add some contrast to make it more dramatic!

5. Send me some results and don’t forget to send the Before shot too! I’d love to see what you come up with! mera@merakoh.com

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To learn more about me visit About Me Ra.

For information on Me Ra’s popular photography workshops, visit “Documenting a Child’s Life.”

To see our day job, visit our website.