Photo Corrections

Original Image:

Corrected:

This is a picture of my cousins and I at the Jersey Shore. I wanted to correct the original photo as if I someone wanted to frame this as a family picture, but wanted a few corrections done. What I did first was take out the people from the background, and the straight layers of sand, shallows, wave, water, and sky made this pretty straightforward. Then I lightened the shadows to 21% because in the original, the faces were half-hidden in shadow. This took away some of the color of the picture, however, so I saturated the colors by 17% to give it brighter colors, and darkened the picture to -9% because the saturation made it brighter. Although I'm afraid I may have saturated a little too much. When I showed people the corrected imagine alone, however, they thought it looked natural. 

Original:

Corrected:

This was a picture I took offshore one day when hundreds of stinging jellyfish washed up onto the beach. The water was murky, however, so the only way I could get a clear shot was by holding the camera beneath the jellyfish and facing up towards the surface. Many of the pictures came out great, but a few of them, like this one, came out really dark because the sun was behind it. So I tried to correct this one, first by darkening the highlights by 22%, and then lightening the shadows to 42% from 20%. This gave a much clearer picture of the jellyfish's features. It took away from the color, however, so I gave it 21% saturation. This made the picture seem unnaturally bright, so I darkened the image to -13% lightness. To give the tentacles near the sun some definition, I upped the contrast by 8%. I'm not extremely happy with how this picture turned out, but I like how you can see the features of the jellyfish better without it looking too unnatural.

Original:

Corrected:

This is an ancient viking sword from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The original picture came out a bit fuzzy and dim, so I wanted to really bring out the old qualities and markings on the blade, handle, and hilt. I upped the contrast by 36% and upped the brightness to 13%. I tried working with the saturation and some more contrast, but this made the picture look unnatural and at one point even took away some of the details of the picture. I think it's a slightly improved, brighter and sharper image than the original.