New Addiction: Photo-Imaging

My newest addiction of choice: Picasa 2. It offers a user-friendly photo-imaging system for free. It's nowhere as extensive as Adobe Photoshop, but for something that costs $0 you're definitely getting a lot of BANG for your buck.

Today I spent a few hours "doctoring" the 100 or so pictures that I took at College Royal last night. Pictures that once would have been designated for the recycling bin were salvaged. The lighting was horrible as can be expected from a formal. Framing was really hard since people were dancing, and my little Nikon had only so much power, BUT with Picasa, quite a few of the rejects were turned into my favourites.

For example this picture of Rachel D. and Silas walking down Old Quebec Mall. The lighting was so poor that in the original, which I don't have anymore, you could barely see the outline of Rachel and Silas. I added some light, turned it into a black and white with a bit of focal colour and voila, one of my favourite shots. I really like the contrast between the colours themselves as well. That definitely wasn't planned on my part.

The Black and White focal colour feature is definitely my favourite feature from Picasa. I love the splash of colour amidst a black and white photo. The contrast is gorgeous. You get the best of both worlds. Lydia posted a picture like this on her website, but it was a feature on her camera. I really loved that picture of the green standing out amidst the graytone. I thought I had to save up for a Canon to get it. It is a bit different than Picasa's feature because I think Canon just filters out certain colours; in this case it seems to be the green in Lydia's room. I could be wrong. But Picasa is just as good, and it's free!

I used the B&W with focal colour again in this shot of Tom. For this picture I cropped it a bit so that the eye would move from Tom to the light in the upper left hand corner and back. It also gives an impression that the light is shining on Tom, basking him in living colour. Since it was a really classy yet modern pose, I again did the whole B&W with the focal colour. The pastel blue, pink, and green really made the picture stand out. This was a mediocre picture in the beginning in terms of framing and lighting, but now in terms of composition this has got to be one of my favourites.


Another pauper turned prince picture was this self-shot picture of Sarah, Katie, and me. Again the lighting was horrible, well actually cruel. It had no mercy on our skin. The glare was really bad. The framing was typical of a self-shot; boring, because my arm movements were limited, but hey, I had to capture memories some how... Katie had a killer outfit on. One of my favourites of the entire night. I wanted to focus on that, so with the handy dandy B&W focal color tool I was able to bring out the red accent of Katie's outfit.


Of the 100-ish pictures there was only one photo that I didn't "doctor". It was a winner the first time around. A rarity at College Royal. Presenting Alex Wong. For one thing, Alex was willing to hold that pose while my camera was charging so there was no blurr. I used flash, which usually kills a picture, but it was surprisingly nice to Alex. I think the boy just has good skin.

Of course after all that shameless promotion for photo re-imaging, there needs to be a little caveat. I don't think photo-imaging is a replacement for good photography skills. I blame it all on the lighting of course. ;)

And if you were wondering if I doctored my profile picture. The answer is a resounding yes! My skin is not naturally that nice.