Sometimes I like to play with images in Photoshop to see what I can learn. There are only about 7 billion things you can do with Photoshop, I doubt even Adobe knows everything. K, mayyybbeeee they do, but the point is that it’s a seriously amazing tool.

From time to time, I get asked questions like, “why do you even need Photoshop, don’t you want to just get it right in camera?”

Um. Yes.

Yes, I do.

But the point is that there are things that you can do with Photoshop that quite frankly, are impossible to do in real life. Like age Kelly’s hair by 50 years. ha! Because I don’t want to go around making unsuspecting clients look old, I’ll do it to my friend Kel. (We’re actually planning for a concept shoot this year so this was advanced planning to see if a wig is necessary..but I digress).

SOOC (Straight Out of the Camera)

Does this remind anyone of The White Witch in Narnia?

With the white/highlighted gray hair, I felt like the red jacket was a bit too dark, so I lightened it up and left the inside and trim red, because I like it and because I can. I gave her hair a bit more volume and softened up her makeup and the overall feel of the image. Also, changed up the composition to be a bit more focused on my subject.
EDIT

SOOC

My goal here was to turn her hair red, successfully. After I changed the hair, I didn’t quite like the red jacket, so I softened up the color to match her lips. Now we’ll know what she looks like if she ever goes red. Maybe I should do this next time I’m looking to change my color. hmmmm.
EDIT

I’ve always wondered what I’d look like blonde.

Sometimes, Photoshop helps you to amaze children like it did Cameron.

He’s notorious for the “cheese face” smile. If you mention the word smile, you get it. So we decided to tell him NOT to smile, not even a little bit…and we got some great smiles. See, he thought he was in the photos to identify the places where their might be deer so grandpa could see. The kid loves adventures, so why not make it superfun? A few days later I took a few photos placed deer in them, printed them off and headed over to visit my buddy.

Are the deer believable to you? Probably not. Did they BLOW CAM’S EVER-LOVING MIND?! Yes. Absolutely. He stared at them for about 20 minutes in amazement. That was worth every bit of the 15 minutes it took to create these images.

The point of this post is to have fun! It’s important to push yourself to learn new things otherwise you’ll get bored. The great thing about photography is there’s so much to learn and do! Every time I pick up my camera I learn something new. Try to think outside the box and see what you can come up with!