Detracting?

Maybe it is taking away from my photos as they are, straight out of the camera (SOOC), but I am still loving playing with the various effect actions that I've found. Last night I discovered the blog of another woman who makes actions and then gives them away for FREE! I love free, it's my favorite price.

For example, take this photo of my son, Levi.


SOOC, his face was a little blurry, his eyes bland, the colors were...ok, I guess. What can I say, it was only my second day playing with the manual settings on my D70. So I busted out a few of the actions that I downloaded tonight. First was Coffeeshop's "Little Perk", which boost the photo's color balance and sharpness slightly. Next I used PioneerWoman's "Sharpen THIS", from her second Action set, which creates a mask over the photos and allows you select which parts of the photo you want sharpened. In this case, Levi's face. Then I used PioneerWoman's "Bring On The Eyes!", which creates another mask that allows you to brighten just the eyes of your subject.

With each of these actions, the changes are HUGE, to say the least. In fact, they're a little too huge, so I backed off on the opacity on each of them, making the changes a little less dramatic. Otherwise Levi would end up looking like a small alien child with bright white eyes. Creepy.

Here's the before and after.



Then there's this photo that I look for the Mission24 challenge, of a statue my mother in law got Nathan and I not long after we got married. I love this statue, it reminds me every day that we have to support each other with love through everything. But the photo itself? A little boring. Hey, it was 1 am, my sources of lighting were, to say the least, limited.


PioneerWoman came up with an amazing action called Heartland. Combine it with her Boost action and it gives me yummy shivers all over.

Now if only I could be awake during the day, so I could take photos of things OUTSIDE of my home. Yeah, that would be great.