Just picked up Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.0

[Scott1970]

I also have the book Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 (No CS4 version out yet), which I have been going through.

Using what little knowledge i have gleaned thus far, I transformed one of my favorite photos from this:


to this:


Three tutorials into the 21 included in this book, and my photos already look much better -- I did my company's Christmas party photography this weekend, and the photos i processed in Photoshop had a professional look to them -- and I have much more to learn yet.

(Click the thumbnails above for a larger photo)

The subject is a Sarracenia 'Dana's Delight' I grow in a bog garden in my back yard, with a tree frog living in it. I call this photo "Symbiosis".

[debbry531]

I understand why it's a favorite photo! It's amazing what you can do, isn't it? I just bought CS4 a few days ago as well and have been playing around. Here's my before and after - I was trying to see if I could salvage the super soft shot. Considering I'm a newbie teaching myself, I'm pleased with the results.

[Scott1970]

That's a pretty remarkable difference! What did you do to it?

[debbry531]

I don't know, unfortunately. I was just messing around with various tools. I did use some actions that I recently purchased to walk me through some steps (i.e., eye brightening) and I built on some of those. Hopefully since I figured it out once, I can again (and I'll pay attention to what I'm doing next time)!

[MicWayWal]

Lesson I learned the hard way over 10 years ago.
I always keep notes of what I do, what I attempt to do and what I experiment with in PS. I keep the notes in the document itself.

[photostein]

If you used LR, you can go into the Develop module and see the history on the left side and it will tell you what you did exactly.

If in PS, then you would need to have used layers to tell since history is deleted each time you close PS.

Enjoy!

Originally Posted by debbry531

I don't know, unfortunately. I was just messing around with various tools. I did use some actions that I recently purchased to walk me through some steps (i.e., eye brightening) and I built on some of those. Hopefully since I figured it out once, I can again (and I'll pay attention to what I'm doing next time)!