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Using Photoshop on your photos and photo enhanceme

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i would like to know what people think of using adobe photoshop or other pc programs to enhance our photographs.how far should we go with photographic enhancements? i've noticed a few railroaders have painted smoke coming out of train engine's smokestacks.this looks good.however,i'm an artist and could spend a lot of time painting backdrops,fog,rain,autumn trees,etc onto my photos or i could just enhance a sky with some simple clouds.what's fair?

Summary

Using Photoshop to enhance your layout photos. Adding smoke and correcting mistakes in photography. Improve the look of your photos and reduce the file size for the web.
Adobe Photoshop ( not Adobe Photoshop Elements which can be mistaken for Photoshop and there is a VERY HUGH difference ) is a powerful tool to work with photos. Versions after 5.5 can be buggy and in our opinion overrun with useless options but that depends on what you use it for. Version 6 and above have much for shock and awe and web hype. We feel that 5.5 was the peak for productivity. Anyway, that said ---

Enhancing photos with add-ins like smoke really depends on the artist and viewer. Some viewers will say anything not part of the layout shouldn’t be there and others would say if it looks real, why not. Like with most, a little goes a long way, use in moderation. In our opinion, if it looks added, you probably have gone too far. If it is hard to tell if it was added or part of the actual layout, then probably ok.

A better use for Photoshop is to improve the image CONTRAST, BRIGHTNESS, SHARPNESS, OVERALL COLOR CORRECTION, UNEVEN LIGHTING. Most of the images we have received needed considerable correction. The photos to right have been modified for examples and were ok from original owner.

CONTRAST ----- low contrast from poor lighting, spot lighting, incorrect settings on camera

BRIGHTNESS - same as above. Most were way too dark and when you increase brightness with Photoshop you have to pull up CONTRAST and maybe SATURATION

SHARPHESS – and poor depth of field due to poor lighting and F-stop. This can be corrected a little in Photoshop.

COLOR, UNEVEN – off color and washed out in center and dark outside due to poor and spot lighting.

The best plan is to take the photos correctly with much flood lighting and a good camera but improvements can be made with Photoshop. Be sure to save the original image and work only with a copy. If you destroy the original, then it is back to the layout.

FILE SIZE – Don’t send billboard size images to a web site like www.myrrlayout.com. Use the .jpg format and high compression/low quality. File sizes over 100kb are way large. Save the original as psd or tif.

27-123Lagain.jpg

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Smoke added
27-123Ldark.jpg

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Too dark and low contrast
27-123Lfocus.jpg

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Front focus due to depth of field and poor lighting
27-123Luneven.jpg

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Spot lighting - not enough flood light
27-123Lcolor.jpg

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Off color due to lighting or camera setting

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