The Digital Darkroom: Salvaging Photos

As a photographer, I am always sending pictures to the cutting room floor (aka - the Recycle Bin) because of lighting issues, etc. When taking so many photos of a subject at once to insure at least a handful of great ones to use, it is inevitable that some will be deleted - some before you realize it's too late. Luckily this one didn't get away...



I was taking a series of photos of my son trying to lick his own elbow (it's impossible, go ahead and try) when the flash didn't fire fast enough and the lighting turned out bad. When I scrolled through the files and noticed the unintentional perfect smile he gave I knew I had to save this moment. So I cropped it and changed to black and white...



Since the lighting was so bad, the photo became very pixelated and the contrast was horrible. Unwilling to let that smile get away I entered the Filter section in Photoshop and started changing the image. I used a very light Crosshatch filter, Accented Edges filter, and added the Craquelure filter on top of that. Then I went into the Levels adjustment and fixed the contrast. This gave it a black and white textured painting look. It's not the photo it started out as, that's for sure...




See what I mean? How could you let that smile end up in the Recycle Bin?