Photo Restoration

So, I have had this CD that my mom lent me for probably a year now. It is a real nice slide show of my late grandparents on their honeymoon. I told her that I would try and clean up a photo or two for her. I finally got a chance to play with it. Restoration is not a specialty of mine but I was able to clean it up a bit. Here is the before and after (left and right if you can’t tell :-) Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Book Review – Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Photoshop CS3

First of all, I have to tell you up front, I am a big fan of Scott Kelby and his books. He just seems to know when something needs to be explained and how to explain it. He writes as if you are sitting right there next to him. I have heard him talk (having watched all 114 episodes of Photoshop TV) and he writes like he talks. He has a great sense of humor and can make what appears at first glance to be a very complicated subject, like Photoshop CS3, easy to use.

With this book, the 7-Point System for Photoshop CS3, Scott takes a different approach then other Photoshop books. Most books are target specific meaning they have chapters detailing a particular tool, such as Cloning Techniques. This is not a bad way to learn but with most photographers, myself included, it’s all about work flow. How do you take a raw image and process it from beginning to end. The creativity options in Photoshop can be overwhelming and it’s very easy to get lost. And when you have 1000 to 2000 images to process for a wedding you want to be able to process accurately and quickly.

In this book, Scott uses 21 lessons to walk you through “his” work flow:

1 – Adobe Camera Raw Processing
2 – Curves Adjustments
3 – Shadow/Highlights
4 – Painting with Light
5 – Channels and Adjustments
6 – Layer Blend Modes & Layer Masks
7 – Sharpening Techniques

A road map from beginning to end. If you are a beginner, you might want to start with a book that explains the tools and more important the tool names or at the very least have a book such as Photoshop CS3 Bible handy before you start using Scott’s book. If you don’t know terms like, “Layers Panel” then you might get a little discouraged. But if you have been through introductory skills and you want to take your processing to a comfortable level, then by all means by this book. I give this book 5 stars!

I will be featuring other Scott Kelby books in upcoming blogs.

Nigel

Nigel was a great kid during this photo shoot. We took these photos in our studio using the single Digitflash flat panel as our only light source. We just got down on his level and let him play. Mom was just off to the side enjoying every moment!