Adjusting in Aperture – The Golden Gate Bridge

I do promise that Targuman.org will return at some point to issues of biblical and rabbinic literature, religion, and academia. Writing coherent posts, however, takes a lot more time than I have had lately. Instead, I have been playing with iPhoto Mobile (for iOS devices) and Aperture as a way for me to unwind in the evening. I have been traveling a lot and taking pictures as I go so this has been a way to relax and keep on top of organizing my photos. I thought I would share with you the results of some tweaking.

I am not expert, not even a power user, of Aperture but what I do is twiddle the knobs. Often times when shooting while on the road you will not have ideal conditions. In my case, I had about 20 minutes at the Golden Gate Bridge overlook with 68 students in tow. As is often the case, it was cloudy in the region. (But check out these photos from just to the west of the images below. To the west, as in simply turning 180•. All sun and blue skies.) This was the original shot. Note it is quite cloudy and gray and a bit askew (I have a tendency to do that, I am not sure why).

Now take a look at the edited version. I have tweaked the contrast, vibrancy, saturation, and most of all the red color. Finally I sharpened the image a bit.

Let’s be honest, it is still not a great image, but it looks a lot better than the original. If I had taken this in RAW format (as my brother is always telling me to do) I would of had even more to work with but I made do. So what is my point with this little post? Obviously it is not a tutorial since I have not given you any steps to follow aside from one:

Play with your photo editing software.

There are books and tutorial videos that you can use and I do recommend them. If you have access to Lynda.com their tutorials are phenomenal. Many universities like PSU now provide access for faculty and students and I highly recommend them, they cover everything you can do on a computer. But more than anything just open an image and start twiddling and tweaking. Pay attention to each step so you get a feel for what does what but experimenting is the best way to learn!

Most of all, have fun.

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