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  5 Things to Avoid When Editing Photos

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  Editing photos is magical.  It takes an image that already has your fingerprints all over it, from lens choice, to angles, to lighting, and it gives it that final dusting of you.  It can be absolutely enchanting to watch your vision come alive as you edit, but sometimes as we first start out (and even as we have been doing this awhile), the photo can pass the magically perfect stage and start to veer into over-edited, fake-looking, or just plain wrong.  Let's look at a few things you can avoid to help you keep your editing expressing YOU.

  1)  Selective Color--I know.  I did it as a beginner.  Crystal did it as a beginner.  It's a rite of passage.  But the problem is that it usually brings you right out of the image and shifts the focus away from the image to something that is only part of the image.  The bright blue shirt takes away from the beautiful gaze.  The colorful beach ball takes away from the beachy fun happening on vacation.  Even the piercing blue eyes can overwhelm an image.  Usually the hours of masking don't turn out to really give MORE to the image.  Usually the story told is either strong enough to stand on it's own, or it's not worth the hours of selective coloring.  

  2)  Overcontrasting--A little contrast to an image is like music.  It makes everything in the image richer and more alive.  But once to much is applied the image begins to look overbaked.  The whites lose their texture, the shadows turn into solid black mush and everything looks like it was taken by a cheap Brownie camera.    So, watch the contrast and use it with a gentle hand.  If you need to, walk away in the middle and come back and look with fresh eyes to see if they image is too contrasty.

  3)  Oversharpening-- With the earlier iterations of the digital cameras and digital cameras paired with lenses developed for film cameras there was a LOT of digital haze surrounding images (there still can be to an extent) and it meant that a light unsharp mask layer was often applied.  And of course, with social media, images get web-sised and sharpened abundantly.  And in general, this is a great thing.  It wipes out that mushiness that Facebook can add to an image, and it lifts an image from a slight digital haze.  But like all good things, there can be such thing as too much.  It becomes readily seen when an image is oversharpened, because the sharpening starts to leave artifacts and hair and fibers can start to look really "crunchy" and straw-like.  Also, eyes can get a strangely alien look when they are over sharpened.  So a little sharpening can go a long way.  Be sparing and watchful.  In today's time of increasingly sharp camera bodies and lenses made specifically for the digital medium, images often are very sharp to begin with and don't need a lot of sharpening if the are in focus to begin with.  If an image is out of focus, over sharpening won't help.  

  4)  Over Softening--Just like with sharpening, skin softening can be a fantastic tool.  Sometimes lenses are so sharp that every pore and skin blemish can appear magnified on camera.  So a gentle, judicious skin smoothing and retouching can be fantastic for making a client feel comfortable with their images.  But if you over smooth an image, it can quickly go from lovely to plastic.  A skin without an texture and no lines looks like a doll and really unrealistic.  So watch for that line and dial it back when you smooth skin.  We feel like our totally unique Pure Retouch technique and set is a perfect answer for getting enough smoothing to make a client feel fabulous, but not lose that lovely texture to the skin that gives the subject charm, realism, and vitality.

  5) Adding too much saturation--Vibrant, beautiful images are the goal of many photographers.  A lot of times, especially when shooting RAW, the colorful scenes we see while shooting come back feeling a little flat.  Often that is a combination of needing some contrast and boosting the blacks, but when we first start out, we think we need to crank up the saturation slider.  I'll tell you a secret (lol, just you and me and the rest of the internet now...), even though Pure is know for it's vibrant color, we very very very rarely touch the saturation slider.  It quickly pushes colors out of gamut (what a screen can read and render correctly), and it messes with the reality of the color.  Skin turns red, leaves are blue, shadows turn purple.  The saturation slider should always be approached with caution.

  BONUS: Working on an uncalibrated monitor-- If you are going to edit your images, you need to know what colors your screen is actually showing.  Most screens arrive from the manufacturer with color issues.  In general, most are a lot cooler (more blue/cyan) than they should be.  Macs tend to be closer, but most are not spot on either.  So if you start manipulating the colors and the exposure of your images and then want to print or view them on a different device, a lot of times the colors will surprise you if you are not calibrated.  What you thought was just warming up a cool image, suddenly becomes a vibrantly orange image, because you were correcting the overly cool monitor color.  So, getting a calibration device can really help you to know what your images really look like.  These calibrators also work off an international color standard, so a professional, dedicated print company will use the same profiles, which means you are making sure that your images will print just the way you see them on your screen.  When I send my photos off to Millers I know I will be getting back exactly what I saw on my screen when I sent it in.  While it does cost money to buy a calibrator, a few messed up print orders will quickly eat up any savings you get from not calibrating your monitor.  I personally use ColorMunki by X-Rite*, and Crystal likes Eye-One Display Pro from Xrite*  (Both are fabulous.)  (Another fabulous and cheaper version is the ColorMunki Smile)*. Many of our colleagues also really like the Spyder products* for their calibration needs.  When you have the calibration software you can also run it every few weeks to a month to make sure that as your monitor is used and ages, the calibration does not slip and change.  So, having a calibrator is a fantastic and important investment in photography.                                                                           

  PS!!  Don't forget that our entire store is on sale for 50% off!  You can also purchase our entire store for only $99!  HURRY!  Ends this week!! 
• 
  Birthday Traditions

  Traditions are the bread that hold the peanut butter and jelly of childhood memories together.

  Every year the night before a birthday, we sneak in and put balloons in the birthday girl or boy's bedroom.  We've done it for each child for the last few years and it is one of the things that they look forward to each year.

  Even when it is not their own birthday, everyone knows that the Birthday Fairy comes on a birthday and they go off looking in the morning.  It is one of my favorite traditions we do for birthdays.  It costs about $20 for all of the supplies, but it starts their day off in an amazing and wonderful way. Even my almost-thirteen-year-old loves it!  Everyone loves to be the center of attention and feel special on their birthday.

  Today Aspen turned 6 years old!

  
  

  So last night I got the helium tank and balloons from Walmart/Target and got to work. :)

  You can find the tank usually somewhere in their party section.  It comes with a bag of multicolored balloons and string.  I use the string, and sometimes I buy separate balloons (one pack of 15 balloons in each color... so 30 balloons total and $2 for the balloons).  The tank runs anywhere from around $19 to $24, depending on your location.

  
  

   

  Then I get to work. :)  Sometimes I get the little doorway streamers, sometimes not.  It really depends on what I have on hand or what I can find when I go to the store.

  These were all edited with Basic Workflow from our First Lightroom Preset collection. 
  

  Here are a few cell phone shots from the last 3 birthdays in our house. :)

  
• 
  How Batch Renaming in Bridge Can Save You Headaches - Pure Photoshop Actions Photoshop Tips

  As we are moving content over from Facebook that we have shared over the last few years, we came across this gem that we talked about back in 2011!  Can't believe it has already been 3 years since we shared this!  We do this a little differently then we did 3 years ago, so here it is, updated and current! 

  We've probably all had it happen.  You have an amazing session.  You deliver a disk full of amazing images.  You eagerly await the client's enthusiastic email response and you get, "Wow!  We love ALL the images you gave us.  But we save IMG_0255 and IMG_0259.  Where are the ones in between?  We'd love to see them all!"  Ugh.  Maybe the ones in between were duplicates.  Or blinks.  Or REALLY wonky expressions.  Or out-of-focus.  But for whatever reason, you don't want to have those images out there associated with your brand.  But once the door is opened and the client thinks there are adorable images of their child that you're withholding, it can be a tricky situation to tactfully avoid (without sounding like you made 4 duds of images either.)

  So, we avoid this by renaming our images in Bridge.  (We also do from Lightroom, and we will be creating a post outlining the Lightroom steps for Lightroom too!)  This means your images will simply go from 1-whatever your last image is.  It doesn't suggest to the client that there are images floating around that could be AMAZING that they do not have and will never see.  Instead it looks like you delivered a great set and they are excited.  

  Afterall, drama avoided is the very best way to deal with drama.

  • Open up Bridge.  It is part of the Adobe Photoshop Program.  
  • Navigate to your folder of images.  We only batch rename photos, after, we have culled and edited the session.  That way if we find more images to edit, or we decide that an image we had chosen to edit, wasn't up to par, we don't have to rename. 
  • Select all the images that you want to rename.  I always add a star rating to my images that I want to keep when I cull my sessions, and then view by star rating of 1 or greater.  That way I only see the images that I have edited.  (As I only edit the images I have giving a star rating too)  You can select them all by choosing the first one, holding down the shift key and selecting the last image, and it will choose all the images in between.  We will go into culling, and how we cull a session in just minutes and a wedding in about 30 minutes, in another blog post

   

  and now you are only viewing the images you have marked with a star. 

  • Go up to your menu and choose Tools > Batch Rename

   

  • For the options, you can choose what you feel is best, however I just choose to rename in the same folder.  That way I am not taking up any more hard drive space.  I then choose the options of Text and that is where I enter the name of the client and date of the shoot.  That way I can search easily if a client has a question later on.  I then start my sequence at 01 or 001 depending on how many files I am renaming.  If it is a portrait session, I usually delivering under 99 files.  If it is a wedding I usually am upwards of 3 digits sometimes even 4 digits. 

  • If you need to add more information to the name, you can add option boxes but clicking the plus sign next to one of the options already present, and then choose one of the options from the drop down menu. 
  • Then hit rename.  Viola, you have all of your files renamed, and the client will never know how many images you took, or that 16 images are missing between shots due to duplicates, out of focus, bad expressions, bad lighting etc. 
  • Save your images as JPEG files, and either deliver to clients, or finish your Photoshop work on the files that need more touch ups and then save, or if you are renaming your JPEG files, Viola, you are done! 

  

   

   

• 
  At Home With Pure--Rachel's Chickens pt. 1

  Part of our triumphant return to blogging is that we wanted to blog a little about us.  About things we liked to do, when we were not being Photoshop ninjas or out doing photo sessions.  It gives us a chance to share who we are and what makes us tick.

  Usually when I write this blog, I write it as both Crystal and Rachel, but for the At Home portions, we'll just be posting as ourselves.  So in the case of today, Hi, I'm Rachel and I'll be your blogger today.

  I am not quite sure how all of this started.  I think the more kids I've had (and I have 7), the more I have gotten interested in ways to be a little more natural.  I've gotten more and more mindful of what we're eating or buying or wearing, etc.  I got into cloth diapers for real (I'd dabbled off and on) a little over a year ago.  We love to grow our own garden and have fruit trees.  But gradually, the desire to have backyard chickens has been sneaking up on me.  Yes, I admit I love animals, so the idea of so pretty chickens wandering in the yard appealed to me.  And then the lure of multi colored eggs?  Yes, please.  But the real drive came from the idea that I could know exactly what I was feeding my chickens and I could know that our eggs were nutrient-rich, and also free from lots of junk.  Studies have shown that chickens that are able to free-range produce eggs of VASTLY greater nutritional content than those who are not allowed that.

  So, about a month ago, we took the leap.  I will probably do a few blogs detailing the journey, but this is how we got started and what we have learned (and what others could learn from our mistakes.)

  I had been researching chickens for awhile before we went out and got our chicks.  I had a vague idea about what needed to be done, but I really just didn't know how it would all play out.  But one thing I did know, with so many little kids in our house, I needed to have chickens with good, docile temperaments.  There are quite a few that are really sweet, but we walked into IFA that Friday afternoon, determined that we would be leaving with some Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks and at least one Ameracuna.  Well, it didn't turn out quite like that.  The Amerecuna's were sold out.  So we went back the following Monday and picked one up.  (Actually...that's not quite true, we discovered that many feed stores sell "Amerecunas" that are really sweet mutt chickens called Easter Eggers.  No big deal to me, but good to know!)  Why did we want these specific birds?  Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks are well-known as very sweet chickens that behave almost like pets.  And the Amerecuna is also known to get along well with humans AND it lays blue eggs.  Yeah, pretty tempting.

  So, I got home from the feed store with my chicks, their starter feed, some probiotics and electrolytes for their water, and a heat lamp for their brooder. I got everything set up and stuck the chicks under the heat and gave them their food.  They were pretty peppy and ate and drank right away.  I did check all of the chicks immediately for what is called "pasting up."  Chickens have one way for things to leave their bodies.  They lay egg and do...other things...through their vent.  As chicks, this can get caked over with droppings and the chick can quickly die if this is not attended to.  Two of our chicks had mild pasting up.  So I had to clean them up gently with warm water.   Chicks have to stay warm.  Since they have no feathers, only down, they can chill quickly.  So I worked gently and carefully, but quickly and cleaned them up and then blow dried them.  I was worried how they would react, but on medium heat and low air, the chicks LOVED the blow drier.  They fell asleep immediately.  It was great.

  

  Here were the chicks on their first night home.  (Minus my Easter Egger, since she didn't get home until a few days later.)  I learned quickly that newspaper should NOT be used in the chicks' brooder.  It can cause splay leg, so that was changed out for old towels quickly.  They seemed much happier with that too.  

  

  Here's Lucy, the day she joined us.  She's established herself as the head of the pecking order, if you can't tell from her cheeky look here.

  Baby chicks brooders (our brooder is just a plastic rubbermaid container) need to stay at 95-100 degrees for the first week.  After the first week, you can start slowly dropping the temp by 5 degrees a week.  They will need to stay under a heat lamp (especially if it is not warm outside) for about 6 weeks, which is when they will be fully-feathered.  It seems amazing, but in just a few weeks, these tiny little balls of fluff were more like teenage chickens.  They grow so quickly.  We've made sure they have fresh food and water available at all times and they are eating machines.  

  The kids all got to picks a name.  Actually they all suggested many, and I picked my favorites.  So we have (starting from the top and going clockwise):  Goldie (a Buff Orpington), Lucy (and Easter Egger), Juliet (the Barred Rock on the bottom),  Stella (the Barred Rock on the top) and Caramelina (the Buff Orpington looking the wrong way!)

  

  And a final image to make you laugh.  The girls think I am their momma hen.

  

• 
  Pure Lighting Tip--Flashes to Give Instant Ambiance

  Do you ever have uninspiring backgrounds?  Or no idea where to shoot?  This post is to show that you don't need to have the Ritz-Carlton to make an interesting image.

  

  Location:  Under a billboard in a parking lot, in the dark, in a sketchy area of town.  (Please note: Pure does NOT recommend shooting under a billboard, in a parking lot, in the dark, in a sketchy area of town.  /end legal disclaimer.)

  But we pulled out our flashes.  We tossed on our cheap Cactus triggers.  (These were V2, before the V5 were released.)  And bam.  Interesting light and an interesting image.

  

  How about this one?  Flashes lead to the resulting image:

  

• 
  At Home With Pure--Caramelina, Our Runt

  
  
  

  I remember reading Charlotte's Web as a young girl and all the drama around poor Wilbur, the runt.  I really never gave much thought to the idea that one of our backyard chickens would be a runt.  But our little Caramelina is.  In the image above, the chicks are about 2 weeks old.  You can see that Caramelina looks much younger than her hatchmate, Goldie.  

  Caramel was one of the chicks that arrived from the feed store "pasted up."  We cleaned her up, but the oil we put on her to stop the pasting from happening kind of matted up her feathers and made her look small.  So for quite a few days, I didn't think anything of her being so tiny.  But as the days passed, I realized she was not just not as fluffy as the rest, she really was smaller.  As the weeks have gone by, she has been slow about growing, and not as fast to feather up, but she has a lot of energy and pep, so I have not worried too much.

  Caramelina has done quite well and not had any issues until one day, she got pecked in the neck.  I am not sure if it was an accident (because she is often under everyone's feet as they eat.)  No one seemed to be purposefully pecking at each other, but it was around the time that dominances were emerging.  You know, the pecking order.  Anyway, suddenly Caramelina had a deep gouge in her neck.  She started scratching at it and it looked like it was getting worse.  I called the feed store to ask what to do, in a bit of a panic.  They told me that the feed store had medicine that would keep the others from picking at the bleeding and help it heal.  As soon as others picking at the blood was mentioned, I looked into the brooder and surely, the others would look curiously and take a quick peck at the wound.  My stomach sank.  I had heard stories of birds with tiny injuries dying due to the pecking.  I tried to separate Caramelina, but she cried and cried for her sisters.  And they cried back for her.  We stuck her in a crate though and took her to the feed store.  I had washed her up and put Neosporin on, but I NEEDED this miracle medicine that would let her stay in the crate with the other chicks.

  

  To stop her from scratching her wounded neck, I made her a little chick "cone of shame" by cutting off a bit of the toilet paper roll and then taping it smaller around her neck so that she could not scratch.  She hated it.  ;)  But it kept her from scratching.

  I got the medicine (called Pick No More) and it seemed to disinfect the wound and soothe it, but it also dyed the area purple so the other chicks would not pick at it.  I put it on her and sure enough, no one picked at her.  They would look curiously, but not touch.  Her wound was able to heal and she was able to maintain her place in the brooder.

  After a few days, I found that the wound was healing, but that the matted down was drawing attention and I was needing to apply more of the purple stuff to hide the scab.  I was pretty sure we would go through a whole bottle in the time it took for the scab to fall off, and I was also worried that the pink of her skin would invite more picking.  So I went all "chicken hairstylist" on her.  I washed her up and then blow dried the down and fluffed it around the scab so that it was all covered by the down.  No one blinked twice at Caramelina.

  Whew.  

  Getting her past the establishment of the pecking order was the hardest part.  Now that things are established, Caramelina seems to be ok.  I have made sure that we have enough waterers and the feeder is big enough that everyone can eat at the same time.  We've just come to realize that Caramelina seems healthy and energetic, but will just be smaller than the rest of the group.

  Here is Caramelina watching all the "big girls."  Sometimes they can do more than she can, since they are bigger and have more feathers.  But she still keeps trying.  Team Caramelina!