Week 1

Darkroom Apprentice Journeyman Master Vectors PSP8 PSP8 - Moving Up Butterfly Bark Painting

Terry Grogan
I love a class where I learn something new the very first week!  I've been using PSP7 for several months now, and I had no idea that there was an "optimal order" in which to apply photo enhancements. 
Here are my two "starter" photos.  The photo on the left was taken in 1968 or 1969. This was my first dog, Cricket.  I scanned it to see if there was anything I could do to improve its appearance with either PSP7 or Photo Album 4 - it definitely needs help!!  The photo on the left is of my parrot, Harley, waving "bye bye".  I took it a few days ago with my Kodak LS443.  It actually looks pretty good as it is.

First, the new tool - Photo Album 4. First impression:  I don't like it.  I found the sliders painfully hard to keep tweaking and moving around, especially with the bad picture.  It took me AGES to modify Cricket's photo.  It wasn't as bad with Harley, as I didn't need as much adjustment.

The next two were done with Quick Fix.  This doesn't do that bad a job.  I could live with the results of this on both photos, and it was definitely easy! It didn't make as good a job on Cricket, but it's definitely far better than the original. It does a nice job on photos that don't need a lot of "help". (As a side note, PSP8 has a quick fix. I think the results are pretty similiar).

Now to my PSP7.  I was much happier with the results from this program, especially with Cricket's picture.  I also LOVE the unsharp mask.  The way it functions was new information for me and I appreciate it! I like it much better than sharpen, and now that I know the proper order in which to improve a photo, I can't wait to tackle some of my other photos. 
For Cricket's picture, I changed color balance to 7,000, used neutral, normal, and natural in contrast, clarify strength of 3, saturation of normal and strong, and unsharp of 1.0, 90, and 4.
For Harley's picture, I changed color balance to 5000, used neutral, mild, and natural in contrast, clarify strength of 2, saturation at less colorful and normal, and unsharp at 0.5, 75, and 6.