NoTHiN but the TRuTH

When I first moved to Columbia from Hawaii at age 3, we moved to the town of Irmo.  I lived in Irmo until I was 8 and then moved to Lexington.  I remember being very upset about moving.  In Irmo, I lived in a huge neigborhood.  Everyday all the kids would come jump on the trampoline and the ice cream truck would come by.  All you had to was walk outside and there were people to hang out with.  We moved to the deep country side of Lexington where there were no neigborhood kids to play with.  Luckily I had one neigbor my age.  But I remember hating that I moved to Lexington and hating living in SC period. 

Now that I'm a little older, I love South Carolina.  I realize all the great things that are available to the people of this state.  Here in Columbia, I have beautiful rivers where everyone hangs out and has a good time.  Of course there's Lake Murray where we can swim, boat, and ski.  Only two hours from the beach and two hours from the mountains.  This really is the life.  (Now if I only had time to get out and enjoy it all!!) 

Here's some pics I took at Saluda River and Lake Murray.  I messed with the contrast on both of these and also the saturation on the river picture.  This is how the originals looked. 

In Photoshop, to mess with Saturation.   Click on Layer/ New Adjustment Layer/ Hue and Saturation.  Here you can mess with Hue, which will change the overall color of your picture.  I typically do not use this feature.  The lightness will change how light your picture is, but I typically do this with other controls.  Saturation refers to the intensity of color.  If you compare the two river pictures, the top one has way more color to it (maybe even a little too much!).  In most cases, you want to add saturation to bring the colors out, but not TOO much that it looks unnatural.  This is a handy trick to make almost any picture look a little better. 

The other adjustment I make very often is with the Levels.  Go to Layer/ New Adjustment Layer/ Levels.  Underneath the histogram you have three sliders.  From left to right, you can control black point, midtones, and white point.  I moved the black point slider in to the right to exagerate my shadows and make the image darker.  This also seems to give the image stronger colors and more punch in my opinion.  I then moved the midtones slider to the left to lighten the image slightly.  I made no Saturation adjustments to the lake image.  The difference you see was made entirely by playing with the Levels.  I change the Levels on tons of my images, because again its an easy two-second trick to make your images look a little stronger. 

Hope this helps you make your pictures look a lil better!! 

<<TRuTH>>