Receta Capturing the Holidays in Photos {Giveaway}
Capturing the Holidays in Photos {Adobe Photoshop Elements}
Nov 24, 2014 by Dara 28 Comments
It’s that time of year when we try to capture the magic of the season. If I walk away with a great photo of the kids building a snowman, my mum and mother-in-law dressed up as reindeer on Christmas morning (every year folks…it’s a treasured tradition!) or a tableful of holiday appetizers, I’m more than happy.
Before I really understood my camera, or had any experience with post-process, I ended up with yellow-tinged food photos or family photos that were less than memorable. Whether you have a fancy camera or are shooting with your iPhone, it’s possible to capture those moments, and make them look even better in post-process, with very little effort.
I’m excited to announce that I’m acting as an ambassador for Adobe Photoshop Elements (don’t miss the giveaway below!). Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks so that you can capture fantastic photos of the kids making Christmas cookies or the beautiful roast turkey that came out of the oven golden brown and juicy. And you’ll see just how easy it is to play around with the lighting, hue and tons of other fun features in Photoshop Elements.
The more and more that I’ve worked with Photoshop Elements, the more I’ve come to realize what a powerful tool it is. And, don’t worry, it’s not break-the-bank expensive. Actually, it’s something you might want to put on your holiday wish list…and then spend all of the days after the holidays playing around with your photos to your heart’s content.
The beauty of the software is that there are three different levels (Quick, Guided and Expert) available for processing your photos, depending how fancy you want to get.
Some of the new tools available in Photoshop Elements 13 are pretty fun to play with. Here are just a few of them:
Crop Tool
When you look at your photo on the screen, you may find that there’s a whole bunch of unwanted space to one side, or you didn’t zoom in enough when taking the photo. The crop tool actually gives you several suggestions of how it thinks you could crop the photo. Just click and…BOOM…it’s cropped.
Black & White Guided Edits
I absolutely adore black and white. That has nothing to do with the fact that it magically erases the wrinkles around my eyes (ahem). While it’s easy enough to switch something to black and white in Elements, maybe you want to do something a little fancier, such as adding a color pop. In the “Guided Edits”, Elements gives you step by step directions to make this happen. It took me all of 3 minutes to change the photo from the one on the top to the one on the bottom.
Facebook Cover Photo
Once you have some awesome holiday photos, you may want to share them with the world (or at least with all of your Facebook friends). How cool would it be to have a customized Facebook cover photo so that you can show off those photos?
I used the Facebook tool in Elements to make a new cover photo for my Cookin’ Canuck Facebook page. After choosing from one of the templates offered, I dragged and dropped my photos onto the template, moved them around to where I wanted, changed the background color and frames and uploaded it to Facebook. Voila!
Even if you don’t use these specific tools, you’ll find that Photoshop Elements gives you the power to adjust your photos so they look just right and to play around with cool effects.
The giveaway:
For a chance to win one of three copies of Adobe Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements, use the giveaway entry form below. Once you answer the question and click “Submit”, additional entries will be available (in other words…more chances to win!).
Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Adobe, plus they provided the software for the giveaway. All opinions are my own.