Using Adobe Photoshop Elements to convert a photo in Black and White

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If your planning on taking some photos at a wedding this year one of the most important things to consider is the Editing.

Editing – Always Begin with the end in mind.

With the ease of use of photoshop and other photo editing programs, you don’t need to be too concerned about the image from the camera. as long as the camera has captured sufficient detail from the scene, you can completely an otherwise ordinary shot into one to a great shot.

The example below took around 5 min in photoshop – and you can see the difference for your self.

The Original Shot from the Camera with NO editing

The final Image following a few simple tweaks in Photoshop

Lets jump forward to a couple of days after the wedding.

The first thing is to get all the shots together from the day, create a folder in your system, maybe “wedding photos” probably good to do it in the “My photos” folder in windows, as this will make easier viewing later, in the folder create sub folders for each card you have and up load each card in to its own folder, if you have the option to change the file you may find it useful later to change the file name to an initial plus a 2 or 3 digit number. i.e., if you get a card from John Smith, copy the shots to the folder “John Smith” and re name the files as js001, js002, js003, then for Julie Jones card, name the folder to “Julie Jones” and the files to jj001, jj002 and so on with all the cards from the day. Now once complete BACK THE WHOLE WEDDING PHOTO FOLDER UP TO DISK IMMEDIATELY!!!, and as disks are only pennies, make a couple of copies for safe keeping.

Now with all the photos backed up you can begin to edit them, I would first create a duplicate of the original “wedding photos” folder for editing, this can be done by right clicking on the folder and selecting copy, then paste, this will give you a copy of the folder with all the photos in. this is the folder to use for editing. Keep the original folder with the original photos in whilst you complete the editing in the copy folder.

When editing, look for shots of interest, shots that say something, or tell you something about the day, even with the use of editing in the camera you’ll still probably have kept some shots that are just no good, they could be:

· Either far too light or dark to retain any detail

· Totally out of focus

· Blurred

· Important detail on the shot to small to enlarge

· Of no interest or relevance

· Repetitive or duplicated

Don’t delete ANY SHOTS just yet if they are:

· A bit light or a bit dark

· Have a coluor cast (the shot looks yellow or blue or an odd coluor)

· A touch out of focus

· The main point of interest is off center or leaning

· The whole shot is crooked

· The main point of interest is small or distant on the shot

· There are objects in the foreground or background that are distracting.

Part 2 coming up soon . In part 2 I’ll include a video tutorial to show you a great but simple technique to save an otherwise lost shot.if you subscribe below, I’ll email you when Part 2 is online.

Have you got any Wedding Photos? Would you like them Professionally Photoshoped for FREE?

We would normally charge around £10 to do an edit of this type with a photo for a client, but if you email in a wedding photo that I can used in the guide then I’ll email you back the full edited image as a thank you for letting us use your photo! and your photo will be in my book and on the DvD!

So, If you have any wedding photos that you would like to have professionally edited, then now is your chance.

I need them to use in my editing section where I’ll be teaching people to do simple editing with their wedding photos. Just subscribe in the box and email me with your photo, or if you have some on the net, just email me a link.

Best Regards

Geoff.

P.S. If you are a professional I’ll give you a mention in the guide and a free link to your site for the use of your images. or if you just want a link to your site anyway just let me know.