First Shots

[tweetykl]

These are some of the first shots I got of my kids with my first dslr. I got Canon T1i. I have not post edited yet but am not sure where to start with that.

[KDM1965]

great photo's I really like the 2and 4 they have good collor...

[DSJohnson]

# 1 is definitely my favorite... I'm always a fan of eyes away from the lens AND compositions with a nice balance of focus and background, especially when the focus is on the right or left of an image.

[kentuckyranger]

Great shots!
Always remember when editing Images less is better.
With this set the only thing I might do would be to adjust the gamma to bring out the skin tones and reduce the harshness of the lighting on all and maybe do a tiny bit of cropping on #2 and #3.
Other than that, these are excellent Images, great work!

Changing things like brightness, contrast, gamma etc is the least damaging adjustment you can make to an image but must be used sparingly because over used, they too can bring a great image to its knees.
Why? Because the human eye has the worst memory when it comes to color and brightness.

The best rule of thumb I use when editing Photos is that for every step I use to take the Photo forward, I'm taking a half step back in Image quality.
What I mean by this is that every time you run a digital Image through a filter you lose a part of the Image's sharpness and detail.
So the less you do to an Image the less detail you lose.
Another thing I'll do when adjusting an image is to get it where I think it looks good and walk away for 5~10 min to rest my eyes.
When I come back, if the image still looks good then I go ahead and save it.
I guarantee as I'm sure most everyone reading this will agree, the more you tinker with a Photo, the worse you make it.
When I first started in digital photography I used to murder Images on a daily basis.
I'd filtered he crap out of them thinking they looked great only to come back to them a few hours or days later to find a Train wreck.

Another mistake I made back then was to get into the edit and save the image, come back later wanting to fix what I did only to find that I'd worked on the original file and saved the edit, losing the original file forever.

Before you do anything to an image file, save a master copy in a separate folder.
The way I do it now is I take the original folder and put main in the folder name.
Then, after making a copy of the folder I put work in the folder name.
I always edit out of my work folders and never touch the files in the main folders.
I've found this works best when dealing with Jpeg files.
Then I put a sub folder in my work folder and name it complete.
That way when I'm editing I can save the completed work in that sub folder thus saving the original file and having a space to quickly get at the completed edits to print or share.

For instance lets say I did a shoot in the backyard with my Dog.
When I upload the Images to my computer I'll name the folder "Dog (Main)".
Then I copy the folder and name it "Dog (Work)"
Then create a sub folder within "Dog (Work)" and name it "Complete"
What this does is give me one location where I can quickly open, work and save edits.
If I have a bunch of Photos, like from a Wedding, I'll add an extra sub folder within the work folder and name it "Post".
That way, if I'm trying different techniques or doing a complicated layer edit on an image I have a place to keep it organized so I can come back to what I'm doing and quickly set up and continue working with the least amount of headaches looking for image files I need to work on.
Only when I'm done with the edit does it go into the "complete" folder.
That way I never get confused about what images are done and which ones I'm still working on.

I even do the same thing with my RAW folders but what I do with those is to make 2 sub folders called "Post" and "Complete".
This way I have everything in one folder because RAW files are easy to distinguish from Jpeg files thus relieving you from having to copy the entire folder to keep it safe.

This way you'll always be able to keep track of your files and be able to know what you're working on or have worked on.

Filtering and layering aren't bad things and can take an image to some wonderful places and depending on what you're wanting to do, the loss of detail is negotiable and in many cases even a wanted effect.
But if you want to keep the crisp details of things like focus and contrast then you'll see just how quickly you'll lose the detail you're wanting to keep when you start running the image through creative filters.

[Dman43081]

I think the first one stands out to me the most great color