Pleasing to the Eye

Now as I have expressed before, I pretty much have no talent where photography comes into play. When family pictures need done, I believe in leaving it to the professionals. I have many favorite must read blogs. One of my favorites is Lola B's. She is truly a kindred spirit. And, she is doing a giveaway currently so stop on over!!! A while back, she had another give away that gave me hope for my not-so-great photography skills. You see, I truly love Photoshop (I only have Photoshop Elements 8) and I love that you can make pretty average pictures look great. So I started to play around a bit, and try some different looks to my pictures. Keep in mind that I am only beginning to explore and try different looks with my tools,
but I feel like there is some great potential !!!

As you can see with these two pictures, the lighting is much softer in the picture below than the one above although Mike thinks it looks fine the way it was before. I love the vintage summer look, as it warms the picture and softens the light.

The next change is Mike's favorite (I personally think it may have something to do with the fact that he loves this picture since it is a picture of the day Collin officially became ours.)

 I will have to get this one framed since I really do love it.

But to me, the biggest improvement can be seen in pictures that normally appear to dark....

....and are softened into this cute little retro look!!!! Not to mention the banner gives off such bright colors and really makes the photo pop a bit more.

This may not be the look for you, and seriously these were my first few pictures I have experimented with, but really and truly, it just gives the pictures I love, the look I love. I do not think I will ever be the photographer type (thank heavens for wonderful friends that posses that talent!) but I think I can take pictures with my point and shoot and get pretty soft pictures. Now if you are in the least bit inspired by this, you will truly be inspired by the artist that designed these actions for photoshop. She is amazingly talented and has the prettiest pictures. The site Florabella Collection is filled with ideas and teaches you how to use the actions and make ordinary pictures oh-so-pretty!!!