Some retouching

I'm not sure if you have noticed it thus far, but most of the pictures (at least the ones taken with the 600D) don't end up here exactly straight from the camera. Sometimes they go through some quite heavy retouching to bring out the colors or to tune down the exposure a bit, so I thought that I'd show you 2 pictures that were taken today, both as original and retouched, so here we go!

I use CyberLink PhotoDirector 2011 and sometimes Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.7 as my retouching programs. I got the CLPD from a photography magazine which I bought for around 10e. The program itself is worth around 80e but luckily I got it as a gift with the magazine!

As you can see, I didn't go with a goal to make the pictures look too realistic.

The yellow tint comes from changing the temperature of the picture. I'll go a bit more into detail with the changes once we get to the picture. Other than that, both pictures have 90% of the same retouches, but the temperature has been lowered a bit on the upper picture, since it didn't look good at all with the same temperature setting as the lower one.

This one was quite fast to do, since I spent most of my time with the lower one, and just copypasted the settings from that to this one, with the exception of lowering the temperature to make it a bit more natural looking.

  

 Here are the details of the retouch:

Lens used:

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens

This one took me almost 1½ hours to finish, since I wanted the background to have slightly different sharpness and color settings than me, and believe me when I say that the process of selecting the entire background as close to the edges of me as possible takes some time, at least with the program that I use. With this one I was never after a result which would end up in the picture looking natural, because at least to my eye it looks better like this. Then again, that's just my opinion, you give me yours so I can learn from it!

Here are the details of the retouch:

Background:

Foreground:

Lens used:

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

This wasn't the style of the day though, since I don't think that the shirt would be appropriate at the place I work in. So now let's move on to the Style of the Day!

These pictures were, unfortunately, taken with my phone again, so apologies for the bad quality!

No hoodie this time since I knew it would get hot during the day.

I really need to change those jeans, been using them for too many days in a row now!

Necklace: Yesstyle.com

Long sleeved t-shirt: JC

Jeans: Yesstyle.com

Shoes: Anttila

Bag: Nelly.com

Hairstyle of the Day:

Again with a smudge over my eye! Someone really needs to clean those mirrors..

Nothing too special, this time I used just some hair powder and hairspray.

Funny how it looks like my hair has highlights in them..

Here's a picture of my "breakfast" at the office for you as well!

..and some wannabe photography!

Also for those interested, here's a bad quality shot from the Ed Hardy t-shirt from the front! (I really need to remember to set the shutter speed to a faster setting when Sara's taking the pictures..)

Song of the Day:

This one is also a song which Sara almost forced me to listen once, it is a good song though!

MBLAQ - Mona Lisa

Now I'm going to hit the shower and possibly play some Diablo 3 after! I'm at Diablo now on nightmare, he's tough as hell but hopefully I can manage it soon!