Photo shoot and Photoshop

I recently took family photos for my sister, Holly. I enjoy pretending to be a real photographer and appreciate it when others humor this notion, too. We had a fun day of taking pictures and trying not to swallow hordes of gnats (which inexplicably swarmed us by the thousands as we searched for a picturesque spot. Shouldn't those things be dead by October?) Holly's girls are, shall we say, wiggly, and so this posed a special challenge as we attempted to get photos with everyone looking at the camera without screaming. Despite these challenges, we ended up with some pretty good pictures. Nonetheless, I decided that I would use my limited Photoshop dabbling skills to fix up some of Holly's favorites. Did I get a little carried away on some of them? You judge.

Exhibit A

The girls weren't looking at the camera, but at least they looked happy and cute. The only problem was that Sean blinked, so I opened his eyes.

Exhibit B

This photo adjustments were primarily dealing with color and contrast, but if you look closely, I attempted to reduce the amount of dribble on Chloe's bottom lip, ever so slightly.

Exhibit C

Again, basically color and contrast adjustments with some tiny modifications. Can you spot them? Look on Jillian's chin and on the left side of the umbrella.

And finally...

Exhibit 4

(Don't worry, I know that four doesn't come after C.)

This last photo is my favorite. One kid won't look at the camera? The other kid keeps waving her arm around?

Bibbity boppity Photoshop! Happy family blissitude.

Not perfect, but considering I only had part of a semester of actually Photoshop training, I'd say not too shabby. The hardest part about editing this picture was actually repairing Sean's shirt after moving Chloe's arm. It could probably still use a little more work, but there you have it.