I'm putting some of my pictures up in a local community center and I wanted to touch them up beforehand. I took a photoshop class back in college and while I still possess some familiarity with the program, I'm not really getting the results I was hoping. If you guys could provide some quick tips on what should/can be done on each of these pictures I'd greatly appreciate it!

1
IMG_0959 by Kristian Cantenshttp://, on Flickr">

2
IMG_1022 by Kristian Cantenshttp://, on Flickr ">

3
IMG_0604 by Kristian Cantenshttp://, on Flickr ">

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IMG_6875 by Kristian Cantenshttp://, on Flickr">

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8568099132_8c80c31391_o copia by Kristian Cantenshttp://, on Flickr">

I dont know exactly the technical way in shop to do it, but 1 , 4, and 5 to me feel like they need to be a bit sharper, maybe the color saturation tweeked up slightly,


on an unrelated note, picture 2 instantly reminded me of Led Zepplin's 4 album lol

Like Mike D said, you could sharpen them a bit. There's the clarity slider in lightroom. You could also try to lower the contrast a tad bit. The first picture is very nice, by the way, I would only crop part of floor off.

with the exception on the last one, they are all flat. You need to bring the exposure up so your highlights are white.

Also, don't sharpen the originals. Sharpening should be done accordingly based on the media which they are presented. In other words, you would sharpen differently for web that you would for print.

I agree with them being flat. Do you shoot in RAW? Photoshop has a nice RAW program with better sliders/options that can help you with avoiding the 'flatness'.

First of all, congrats on your show! You've got to be proud of that, and you must feel an obligation to do your damn best. I hope it leads to many more, and motivates adventures for you and your buddies.

Taking liberties with one of your pix, I played with #1 in Photoshop Elements 11. I like the layout of this picture; but the bright square of sun in the foreground is distracting, and I can't see the gritty texture of the stairs and marble panels very well.

1. Original.


2. I cropped out most of the foreground floor. Just left enough to show that there's some kind of airy opening to the left.


3. In Expert Mode I used lighting levels and cut off the unused high end of the histogram. This gives more "bandwidth" for contrast.


4. So far...


5. I made it a little brighter and pulled down the contrast a bit.


6. So far...


7. In Guided mode I pulled sharpening out; this makes it gritty really fast so needs to be done with restraint.


8. My best effort:

What I can't fix without gross manipulation is lack of a focal object. Something lying on the stairs like those scary rag dolls that seem to hang around these places. Or maybe a naked woman smoking a joint. Of course that would be staging and not authentic. It's hard to be a journalist and an artist at the same time.

I would take advpacks advice.

I never got around to thanking you guys for the help. A lot of this advice was incredibly helpful (and amusing!). Thanks so much. The exhibit is going great and I've sold a few prints