At Home with Tech

If you want your fall photos to have more pop, consider taking these steps after you snap your pics.

I admit it. I often like to add in a bit more color and contrast to the photos I snap. A little more brightness too. The process is easy to do in any number of ways. You can do it directly using your smartphone’s photo app or in a photo-editing program like Adobe Lightroom.

Add your Own Ingredients
Enhancing the look of your pictures is like adding your own personal filter, and this practice should give your pics more pop without making them look too manipulated.

Even if the colors start to look a little too good to be true, if the effect pleases you, I say why not?! (By now, haven’t we all become photographic artists at some level?)

And with fall colors all around us, now’s a perfect time to take some shots and squeeze a little more oomph out of your images.

Here are a few of my own shots from my iPhone and Panasonic Lumix LX-10 during my family’s recent apple-picking adventure. I’ve positioned the original photos on the left next to my ‘Barrett-boosted-versions.’ (And if you need to look closely to spot some of the subtle differences, then I’ve done a good job.)
Take More than One Step Forward
Sure, you can always slap on one of your photo app’s premade filters to give your pics more zing, but contributing your own special visual ingredients in post can maintain your sense of ownership.

Tweak the settings for:

• Brightness
• Shadows
• Contrast
• Color saturation

Yes, it takes more time that simply clicking ‘enhance,’ but one click or tap is rarely a total solution to feeding your creative self.