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    • Favorite Pregnancy Apps
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      6 Stunning Photos You Would Never Guess Were…

      February 11, 2019

      Photography

      Simple Tips For Editing Snow Photos On Your…

      December 13, 2018

      Photography

      I Wrote A Photography eBook And This Is…

      December 6, 2018

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      Creative Lighting Ideas To Help You Take Great…

      November 27, 2018

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      Learn How To Take And Edit Photos On…

      November 19, 2018

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      December 19, 2018

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snapseed

Simple Tips For Editing Snow Photos On Your Phone
Photography

Simple Tips For Editing Snow Photos On Your Phone

by Jill December 13, 2018
written by Jill

We got caught in a big snow storm in Virginia this week, and while it was kind of a nightmare to get the RV out of, our kids had such a fun time playing in the GIANT snowflakes. (I’ve never seen them so big and fluffy!)

I remember the first time I took photos of my son in the snow years ago, I was so disappointed that they didn’t look as bright and crisp as I was seeing with my own eyes. But I had no idea how, nor the tools to fix that so they just remained gray and dim. 

Now, I know exactly how to use my favorite apps to make our snow photos look bright and happy, and I’m going to show you how I edited this one, and how you can use these same steps on your own snow photos.

First, I opened the photo in Snapseed and pulled up the Curves tool.

Snapseed is a free app available in the App Store and Google Play.

I pulled my midtones and light tones up, and then dropped only the very darkest tones at the bottom of the curve. This brightened my whites, kept the boys’ skin tones natural, and added depth by darkening the darkest colors.

Confused by curves? I have a whole chapter dedicated to understanding this powerful editing tool in my eBook Picture Play!

When editing your snow photos, try a similar approach of pulling that top 1/3 of the line up just a bit to brighten and whiten the snow. 

Next I opened the Details tool and selected Structure.

I increased Structure by 29 which made the snowflakes stand out more and brought out detail and contrast in their hats and the building behind them.

Structure is a really fun tool to play with to add a little extra magic to your photos!

Next, I wanted to create a bit of a light and airy feel so I opened the Vignette tool.

But instead of creating a dark vignette around my subjects, I created a reverse/bright vignette- meaning I made the outside of the circle brighter than the inside. This draws attention to my subjects, who are still properly exposed- their skin tones look great, they aren’t too washed out or too shadowy. The area outside the vignette is just a little brighter. 

Try this when your subject is mostly surrounded by bright whites and lighter colors!

The white balance looks pretty good to me, but sometimes snow photos can look really blue or cold. So head to the White Balance tool.

I clicked the eye-dropper tool and put my crosshairs over my white snow. It suggests I make it 3 degrees cooler, and I think that looks good.

When you’re using the eye-dropper tool, just be sure to put those crosshairs over anything white or neutral gray in your photo. See how it automatically adjusts for you. If it looks off, try moving it around to another white or gray spot on your photo to see if you can find a better match.

After that, I saved a copy of my photo from Snapseed and headed to A Color Story for a quick filter. There are two in the free Essentials pack that I think will work well with this and many other snow photos. 

A Color Story is a free app with some free features and some in app purchases. It’s available in the App Store and Google Play.

The first is appropriately named Ice Ice. I applied it at about 65%.

Ice Ice is more muted, cool and less saturated than Pop, which is applied below at about 50%. You can really tell the difference between the two when you look at the red in the bricks.

Both are great for clean, crisp edits with bright whites that will play nice with your subject’s skin. (No turning anyone orange!) 

Again, here is the before:

Here are the finals:

Pop

Ice Ice

RECAP: Tips For Editing Photos Of Snow on Your Phone

  • Use your curves tool (both Snapseed and A Color Story have these) to bring up your light tones and midtones by pulling up the top right side of the curves line-  whitening your whites and brightening your subjects’ skin.
  • Play with the Details->Structure tool in Snapseed to increase or decrease detail, contrast, saturation, and clarity.
  • Try a revere vignette in Snapseed by placing the Vignette tool circle over your subject and increasing the outside of the vignette (dragging the slider to the right) and making it brighter instead of darker. 
  • Check your photo’s color temperature with Snapseed’s White Balance tool. Use the eye dropper and select a part of your photo that is or should be white (like your snow) or neutral gray.
  • Try filters in A Color Story-> Essentials pack. These come free with ACS. Two of my favorites for snow are Ice Ice and Pop. Personally, I rarely ever apply filters at 100%. Try pulling it down to 50-60% to see how that works for you.

If you liked this and would like to learn more about how to take and edit photos you will LOVE with only your phone and free/cheap apps, purchase my eBook Picture Play! 
It’s 161 pages of tutorials, examples, and some of my favorite tips for making my own photos pop. It’s a digital download that you will receive immediately. AND IT MAKES A GREAT HOLIDAY GIFT! There is a digital gift card option at checkout. 

December 13, 2018 1 comment
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Instagram Picture Play In Snapseed
Photography

Instagram Picture Play In Snapseed

by Jill April 3, 2015
written by Jill

I get questions from time to time about how I edit my photos, both my DSLR ones (more coming soon!) AND the ones I post in Instagram that I edit on my phone.

Thought I’d take a few minutes today to walk you through the latter.

To start, I do 90% of my photo editing in Snapseed. It’s a free photo editing app, and I love it for how simple it is, but also for how much you can do with it.

Occasionally, I’ll use Edit.lab to add some fun light effects, and I dabble with VSCO, but I mostly keep it pretty simple and clean, and rarely apply the built in IG filters.

The image I’ll start with is one I snapped yesterday (with the native camera on my iPhone 5) of Lowell on the floor next to his sister who was going through her Easter candy from her preschool egg hunt. I loved the story it told, how you could see Leyna in the shot, and the open egg on the floor. I also loved how he’s naturally framed within the table.

IMG_2392

I took it into Snapseed and opened the “Tune Image” controls (icon of a yellow wrench). From there I started by increasing the brightness by about 30. I always start with focusing on my main subject when I work these controls. The goal is to get the subject exposed properly first. I’ll show you how I fix the rest of the picture in a bit.

3

Then I increased the shadows by about 20 to lighten the picture up even more. This also tends to flatten the image, so use it sparingly.

IMG_2402

I bumped up the Ambiance a bit. I like to say the Ambiance gives an extra pop of color and clarity and contrast all in one. I doubt that’s the technical description, but it’s what I keep in mind when I use it. Because of this, I rarely ever use it beyond about +30 because it makes my pictures really unnatural looking.

In the future, I’ll try to show a picture play of using it to decrease the ambiance, which lends to softer, darker, more moody look.

IMG_2403

I love playing with the white balance. It can greatly affect the mood of an image, and really helps skin tones. Always keep a close eye on skin. I never want my human subjects to look blue or like they have a sunburn or jaundice. Upping it just by about 10 here gives the image a cheerful, sunbathed feel.

IMG_2404

I’m a fan of adding some contrast to pictures. Again, this is one of those you have to use sparingly or it will make your subject look scary. I gave it just enough contrast juice to bring out the pinks and blues and those gold shoes. Do you see? Also liking the definition in his face against that white island here and how it’s darkened that table frame.

IMG_2406

Once I’ve made it through most of the Tune Image controls (I rarely adjust the saturation, and it wasn’t appropriate in this case), I move to the “Details” control. The icon looks like a blue razor blade. I use the sharpening control to sharpen the picture just a touch.

IMG_2409

Now for my favorite part of Snapseed- the “Center Focus” control. It’s between “Grunge” and “Tilt Shift” and has bokeh spots for it’s icon. For this picture, I placed the focus dot over my subject and increased the size of the circle to cover his body (it was hard to screen shoot this while I was doing it, I moved that circle over to the right and up some more).

I took the blur all the way down to zero because I wanted the details of Leyna’s legs and the table to be crisp. Then I increased the inner brightness on Lowell just about +20, and decreased the outer brightness by about -70. That gave me this nice vignette that makes my subject pop even more, and enhances that natural frame effect of the table.

6

What I LOVE about this feature is you can move it anywhere, so you don’t get a true vignette all the time. Notice that the top of this picture isn’t nearly as dark as the bottom. It doesn’t look like a circle of shadow all the way around him. That’s because the center focus ring I created reached up to the top of the picture more. I love putting CF circles over subjects to the left or right of images, and darkening the other half of the image, too.

And you can also use it for the opposite effect, increasing brightness outside the circle, decreasing inside. I’ll show that another time.

5

Finally, I wanted to bring a little light and contrast back to Leyna’s foot that and leg that was darkened with the Center Focus. For this, I clicked on the “Selective Adjust” controls. They are the 2nd set of controls, a blue circle icon with a small b in the center.

First, click that + in a circle at the bottom, then tap on the picture where you want to place the selective adjustments. I tapped near her shoe. Then pinch or zoom to decrease or increase the area that will be affected. There’s this great red light that shows you what you’ve selected. I decreased it even more than what you see here and moved it over to where it was really just affecting her shoe and her leg.

Then I bumped the brightness and the contrast up just enough (I think about +10 each) to bring that part of the picture out and away from the darkness of the rest of the edge.

IMG_2417

Finally, I cropped it, using the “Crop” control- it’s icon is a purple crop square. I brought it in just enough to really frame the bottom and left side with the table.

Since Instagram only allows you to upload images in a 1:1 format (or a square), I used Instasize app to create a white border around it, then sent it to Instagram from there. I did this because cropping this image to a square would lose that natural frame of the table and/or cut out Leyna’s legs and the egg, which are telling the story.

And this is what I wind up with on Instagram…

A photo posted by Jill Krause (@babyrabies) on Apr 3, 2015 at 9:34am PDT

I hope this was easy to understand! Please feel free to leave questions or your own tips for editing in Snapseed in the comments.

ALSO!! If you’re already on Instagram, you should totally head over to THIS picture and enter to win 2 $500 Amex cards! One for you, one for a friend. So super easy to enter, and I adore the 9 other bloggers involved. If you’re considering trying out Instagram, you should totally sign up and enter.

Snapseed-For-Instagram

April 3, 2015 7 comments
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PhotographyThe Story

They Sleep So We Can Regroup

by Jill March 5, 2013
written by Jill

Let’s do better tomorrow, little man. Both of us. Let’s do better tomorrow.

Taken with my Canon 6D, uploaded to and edited on my iPhone with the Snapseed app. Technology makes me happy. Pushy 4 year olds and limited tempers from both of us do not. Here’s to another day.

March 5, 2013 11 comments
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