iPhoto – Use it or Lose it?

Back in the day when bits were bits and computers were proper hefty big boxes with appropriately teeny screens we started learning Photoshop. The most accessible bit of photoshop is the Filters menu, and it’s the go to starting place for anyone beginning to mess about with photos ‘Artistic, Blur, Brush Strokes’ – all at the click of a button. The beauty and sheer messing-about joy of filters, “click click click” and revel in that pixel pushing power!

Today photo filters are hugely accessible through various apps and free programs. On the whole we’d say they’re a nifty enough way to enhance what might be a dull image, they’re quick, they’re fun and it’s still hard to resist playing about with them!

But. But. But.

iPhoto and its Filters

Filters are fairly big hammers and photos are usually delicate enough little beasties. And as soon as you get that newly filtered photo off your phone and decide to print it, the slash and burn marks of the filter can suddenly become a very very big issue.

We have seen some humdingers coming in the door. Previously blue sea transformed to a quite interesting hue of purple, a sun-set tortured into pinkness and grass magically transformed to blue!

Mac’s come pre-loaded with iPhoto so we decided to take a peek at it. A lunchtime trip to Dun Laoghaire Harbour with my trusty camera set to my default ‘Full Auto’ and back to The Pictorium, filled with the usual dread at the prospect of seeing my photos. And not without good reason….

I was hoping to get a fairly dramatic photo that we could put onto a canvas print and get up on the wall. What I actually managed to capture was a pile of boats during a dull enough afternoon all slightly underexposed and full of my own generally shoddy photographing skills.

 

IPhoto – To enhance or not to enhance!

So into iPhoto with it. And lo and behold in true Apple fashion there’s a button called “Enhance” – it even has a magic wand beside it. Clickity click and my previously dull photo is magically Enhanced. It’s all bright and shiny and it could be a harbour in somewhere sunny and exotic. Except it’s not. The sky has green bits in it. It’s outrageously overblown and oversaturated in some places and quite the opposite in others. Thank god for ‘Revert to original’ option…

 

 

IPhoto – Effects: Good or Bad!

But wait there’s another magic button “Effects”. There’s a few options there Lighten, Darken, Contrast etc. All fairly self-explanatory in a non-photoshop kind of way. For this photo I am thinking a filter called Lighten is my best bet. It works by incrementally increasing the filter every time you click – so far, so straightforward. If I’m nitpicking (and I am!) I would offer an observation that it’s having a disproportionate effect on the highlights but there’s no denying it does brighten up the shot and makes it slightly less dull.

 

iPhoto v Photoshop?

So – effects are definitely a positive in terms of getting a bit extra out of your photos. Where they can turn into a negative is when you ask them to do too much.

Of course we had to drag the photo into photoshop for the hell of it. A very quick bit of colour rebalancing later and the below is the result.