Just for Fun

I am still going through the tutorial at Life with My 3 Boybarians and I got to the posts on white balance.  I had to skip over practicing in manual mode at first because I couldn't figure out which button to push to switch from setting shutter speed to aperture.  I could set one or the other, but not both at once.  I did find that if I set aperture in aperture priority I could then go to manual mode and change shutter speed.  This was not efficient.  So I moved on to white balance until I could figure out where my manual had gone.  (I have now found it and figured it all out, but that is another post).

Anyway, I tried all the different white balance settings in my camera to figure out which one worked best in our front room.  I found it is a different setting for the different lenses.  But I don't remember which was what.  Since iPhoto does not tell me what white balance setting was used for the picture, I took a whole lot of pictures of Huckleberry for no real gain.  Especially since the tutorial occurred over a year ago so I don't really have anyone to link to and see this post.  Oh well.  I chose to record what I am learning anyway, because I am bound to forget otherwise.  Then I'll have to learn it all over again and that I do not have time for!

So I took a lot of pictures of Huckleberry.  Unfortunately, one of my favorites was not on the right white balance setting and the background, well, you'll see...

I did a clean edit--which basically means I opened it in Adobe Camera Raw and fiddled with white balance and some other numbers.  I liked the improvement:

But, well, the background was still there!  I cloned out the clock and cropped down, but it was still too distracting.  So I decided to play with my lasso tool and give Huckleberry a whole new background.

 

Since his party is Sunday and his party theme is Inventions, and I don't have any real use for a picture of my child as a mad scientist I decided to make it a thank you card.  Now we just have to print them, have him write something, sign them, and mail them.  Ummm, I don't know how likely that is.

And since today is the day I learned about sharpening pictures for the web, I have to give you my last edit.  I promise not to show this difference everyday, but I'm so happy to have figured it out!

It doesn't make quite as much difference since he glowed too much at full opacity, but fun anyway.  

Let me tell you!  Now that I have discovered pictures with horrible color casts but no other problems can be rescued so "easily" I'll probably be keeping more of my pictures.  Don't tell my husband. Shhhh!

Okay, this picture had more problems with it then just the bad white balance (which I changed now) but isn't she cute?  My happy little Heron Blade Sword Master!