Photo Editing

I downloaded the Lightroom 3 Beta recently and started tinkering with it. Here is yesterday's 365 picture, SOOC (straight out of camera):

Yikes! I almost always keep my camera in manual mode to force myself to learn about exposure - aperture, shutter speed, ISO and whatnot. Last night's photo was taken quickly in our bedroom before Conor went to bed. Poor lighting, hastiness, and inexperience made for a not so great picture - white balance and exposure are off, and it's noisy due to the high ISO. I'm sure photography types would cringe.

But it's a cute snapshot of Conorman, so I opened it up in Lightroom to see what I could do to improve it. I have no experience with this program and am learning on the fly. I adjusted the white balance to Auto (somehow it was set to Custom and I forgot to change it back.) That helped a lot. Then I went to town. I'm sure I overedited it, but it was fun playing with all the sliders. Hopefully by the end of the 365 Project I will have learned much more and improved a lot so can look back and laugh at this. Here's my workflow from Lightroom:

Exposure (-0.33)

Clarity (+15)

Vibrance (+15)

Fill Light (+10)

Black Clipping (+2)

Contrast (+5)

Temperature (-45)

Sharpening (+8)

Edge Masking (+23)

Saturation (+7)

Fill Light (+12)

The final product:

Not perfect, but much improved and I'm happy with it!