Today, in fact, is my daughter’s 8th birthday party.  I can’t BELIEVE she’s 8 already!  She decided on a sleepover party with 8 other friends and a rainbow theme.  We’ve had so much fun making her invitations (she insisted on paper invitations – I had to get out my paper cutter and my glue – gasp!) and planning out activities.  We have painting, kraft bag decorating, and polymer clay bead making all lined up as activities!  Oh – and a new movie, of course!

So – where does a mom on a mission for a rainbow themed party turn?  why Pinterest, of course! :)  Want to see a few of favorite rainbow finds from Pinterest?

Rainbow Potion – a fun kids drink with sprite and Kool-Aid that looks so cool and colorful!

Rainbow Fruit Skewers – beautiful, delicious, and healthy!  And you could always just arrange the fruit on a tray in rainbow fashion and leave out the skewers :)

…and check out THIS CAKE.  Truly, it’s the mother of all rainbow cakes!

And there’s rainbow paint chip garland, rainbow woven gift wrapping, and even a rainbow wooden mat!

Seriously, every time I searched i ended up meandering…from food to decorations to completely random things.  But they were all COLORFUL!  So, I got to thinking…why not spice up my scrapbooking a bit with a few rainbow inspired pages?  And I asked our very own Kylie to play along with me!  I hope these cool colorful layouts inspire you to add a little rainbow color to your pages!

First up is Kylie…and all I can say is WOW!

I could look at this page all day.  SO much detail and attention into the background papers!  …the stitching, the random width of the stripes (using a Rise & Shine easy-as-pie template), the little bits of elements scattered about.  And I love how big and bold she went with the use of the rainbow in her design.  Absolutely gorgeous!

Next is one of my creations.  ‘Round these parts (Texas) it’s SO hot and dry all summer.  So when we get a little rain, the kids all go crazy.  They play in it, lay in it, run in it, basically just BASK in the rain!  I’ve had these pics for a few weeks, wondering what to do with them.  I love the way the rainbow papers in the background brighten up the overall design (especially the gray, overcast pics!).  I also like the little sentiment…because these kids really do make each other happy.  ( I love our neighbors so much I made a page about our little cul-de-sac :) )

And finally – one more rainbow inspired creation by me.  I’ve mentioned in the past how much I loved using ink/paint/pens in my paper scrapping days, and I thought a rainbow was a perfect chance to bust out the virtual paintbrush yet again :)  Oh, and yes, that photo of my daughter is totally blurry.  But I still love it.  She’s laughing, she’s being real, and i just love the moment!

Want to get the look of those brush strokes?  I started with a basic brush and made a few adjustments.  Then I saved it as a new brush pre-set, so I can use it any time!  Here are the settings:

I started with a basic “flat curve” brush in Photoshop, then adjusted some of the bristle qualities.  And most importantly – check “wet edges”.  This gives realistic color variations throughout the stroke :)

That’s it for today!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend…wish me luck with our first big sleepover party tonight! :)

The Hopscotch collection remains one of my favorites ever…and that’s saying something given all the amazing goodies in the Shoppe!  I admit that I’m a sucker for color – and I love using the power of emotion that color can evoke.   Hopscotch contains most of my favorite colors – (orange, blue, turquoise) and this collection just makes me HAPPY!  And the papers…oh my, they are beautiful :)

With the School Additions the possibilities are endless!  Sure, you can do school pages.  But the pencils, brads, notebook photo frames are perfect for everyday use, too!  Just wait until you see what my fellow Shabby Artists have come up with <3

Let’s start with Kim’s layouts!

I LOVE the way Kim tucked in all the colorful flowers around the photo strip. And how cool are these pics from 1982?  Kim and her sister!

Kim and I both have boys starting Kindergarten on the 27th of this month!  Her journaling is so perfect for capturing all the emotions we experience as parents, preparing to send our babies off to school for the first time.  And let me just say – Mario must be the designated mascot of 5 year old boys around the country :)  we have tons of Mario themed school supplies ourselves!

Now let’s move on to see what Casharina has for us!  Here we can see just how versatile your scrapbook supplies can be if you master the art of re-coloring!

 Those photos are so sweet – I love the pink and blue combo here – combined with papers from the Darling Paper Pack, you can get a whole new look!  And next up now is Rosy:

Rosy’s layout highlights one of my favorite things about the Hopscotch collection – the colors are so versatile!  blues of the sky – greens of the trees and grass – with bright orange and yellow to provide contrasting pops of color!  I love her design here that gets so many different photos on one page, too.

And now let’s see what Kylie created with Hopscotch and the School Additions:

As usual, Kylie packed tons of detail into her page!  The elements of the two collections combine so perfectly – and what a wonderful design!  I especially love the white-on-white detail of the background paper – that white base color is a perfect backdrop for all that gorgeous color.

Kylie’s second layout is beautiful!  I know I already mentioned how beautiful the papers are – and this layout showcases them perfectly!

Finally  – here’s what I came up with.  I added in the Sandbox Summer Additions and was amazed at how easily they worked together!  I didn’t even have to re-color :)

We just got back yesterday from a long weekend spent enjoying the end of summer with good friends…a few days at the beach celebrating our last days before school starts!  My kids are on the right, and the three in the photo on the left are life-long friends of my kids.  It’s so awesome watching them all grow up together :)

So head on over to the Shabby Shoppe and pick up Hopscotch and Hopscotch School Additions!  Hopscotch is only $5.95…and the School Additions are a steal at just $2.95!  Both are ON SALE for a limited time!

Thanks for stopping by!  Kylie will be here on Thursday with your Project Scrap AUGUST templates! :) 

This week’s selection for LOTW really stood out- it’s loaded with interesting details and ideas that I’m just dying to scrap lift!

Hanging out with Grandma by BessySue581

BessySue581 took her inspiration from this LO by  Kim - but she put her very own unique and creative touches on her design!  I absolutely love the clever addition of the photos across the top – simple flower and ribbon clusters create an instant photo banner!  I love layouts that make great use of space, too – and this one is FILLED with gorgeous details.  Every corner of this LO has something pretty <3.

Congratulations BessySue581 on your LOTW selection!  You’ll be receiving a $10 gift card to the Shoppe in your e-mail sometime later this week (PLEASE NOTE that due to technical difficulties that SP and Kylie are having…it might be a few days before they can email it to you – VERY SORRY for the inconvenience, but rest assured that they will send it over just as soon as they can – THANKS)!

Hope your week starts off wonderfully :)

So – on to today’s topic!  We’ve talked about ways to use Soft Light a few times in the past:  Kylie showed you all the blending modes HERE, and Rosy showed you how to create tone-on-tone papers HERE.  Well I’m back with yet another way that a Soft Light layer can help you with your scrapbooking – by giving your photos the perfect “kick”!

It’s hard to describe what a soft light layer does – but to me it just make a photo “more”…more vibrant, more contrast, more depth.  You can see from the example above that the photo on the right seems crisper, sharper, more “clear” even.  And the only different between these two images is the soft light layer!

So how do you do it?  I’m pleased to say it is SUPER easy, and is possible with PS and PSE :)

Let’s see a few more examples!!

…and how about this one!  you can see the full effects in the amazing after picture!  I left the Soft Light layer at 100% (full strength) in this one!

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Kylie’s sharing a fun & easy hybrid project on Friday…along with a cute little giveaway!

Happy Friday from the Shabby Shoppe!  It’s Beckie here with you again, and I’m ready to dish about some of my very favorite beauty products!  I’m kind of fickle and I love giving new things a try and I’m eager to share a few little gems here with you today :)

Starting off…we have my favorite cleansing and toning products!  I’m going to confess right now that I need a low maintenance cleansing routine – and the Olay 7-in-1 cleansing cloths perfectly fit the bill!  These cloths easily remove all my make-up and leave my skin cleansed and moisturized.  I follow it up with a few spritzes of the AMAZING botanical kinetics toning mist by Aveda.  It smells delightful and is very light and refreshing.  Together, these two items give me the quick and easy cleansing routine I need for my hectic schedule :)  And at just $8.99 for 30 cleansing cloths and $17 for the toning mist, I can come clean with a clear conscience over the cost :)

With the arrival of warmer weather, I made a  trip to Sephora with a girlfriend and we indulged in some new spring make-up!  I asked the associate to help me find a lightweight liquid foundation that would leave me looking fresh, healthy, and natural.  I also like having built-in SPF in my foundation, as I find myself outside in the harsh summer sun quite a bit with the kiddos.  I’ve been wearing my new makeup for about a month now – and I still love it!  First off, I got the Radiance primer by Laura Mercier.  I apply it to my cheeks, and it gives a subtle shimmer to my makeup finish.  (There’s a non-shimmer version available as well!).  And over the primer I apply LORAC Breakthrough Performance Foundation.  With SPF 15 and anti-aging ingredients, my skin feels fresh and healthy all day long.  Oh, and one really neat tip – the girl applied my foundation with a mineral powder brush.  The short, tight artificial bristles make it super easy to brush on consistent coverage.  You can use any artificial bristle kabuki/mineral powder brush, but I went with the Sephora brush.

The last time I talked make-up here on the blog, I mentioned the Nars Multiple…well, it’s still one of my favorites.  And I learned a new tip!  Not only can you apply the creamy color to your cheeks, you can apply it to your lips and cover it with clear gloss for a new look!

I recently had lunch with another girlfriend whom I hadn’t seen in several months.  I immediately noticed how youthful and healthy her skin looked and I asked her about it – although I was slightly dreading the answer because she has very expensive taste!   She started laughing and said “You’ll never guess…it’s Vaseline!”.  She said she puts it on her face before bedtime 2-3 times per week and had been doing so for several months.  She said it made a huge difference in the health of her skin – and from what I saw, I totally agree!  So out of curiosity, I googled Vasline and found several articles that also hailed the benefits of this quintessential beauty product.  Another great tip for Vaseline?  Mix your leftover lipstick with a little Vaseline to make your own lip gloss!  Best of all… you can pick up your very own tub of Vaseline for less than $2!

That’s all I have to share with you today!  I would LOVE it if you’d share some of your favorite products and beauty tips in the comments section!  If you’d like to take a peek into some of our other Shabby Artists’ Beauty Bags…CLICK HERE!  And I hope you all have a wonderful weekend…Jenelle will be with you on Monday for LOTW!

I’ve had the pleasure of talking photography on here many times, but have never taken the time to explore ways to help every scrapper get the most from her everyday point and shoot camera.  With these simple tips, you can learn to get the very best results from your basic camera, and maybe even get some creative shots you never expected along the way :)  Ready??  let’s go!

(oh, and for reference, I have the Canon Powershot SD770 “Digital Elph”…about 2-3 yrs old)

1.  READ YOUR MANUAL

Boring, I know.  But there’s just no way around it.  You’ll never know what your camera is capable of unless you read the manual.  Nearly all point and shoots have many different shooting modes and creative settings and you want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth!  If you’re like me and you’ve uh…mis-placed your actual manual… :) …never fear!  All the major camera makers have .pdf manuals available for free download in the “Support” area of their websites.

As you’re reading along, if you find an interesting feature – stop right then and try to access it on your camera.  Most point and shoot cameras use only a few basic buttons and you might be surprised at how easy it is to access these features!  You’ll also remember them better if you’ve practiced :)

For my camera, I realized – after finally reading the manual – that most of the options displayed on the screen have “sub menus” with additional settings available to scroll through with one simple click.  For example, I’d seen a little icon labeled “Kids and Pets” – but after I read the manual I realized it had A TON of special shooting settings:  Beach, Snow, Aquarium, Under Water, and even Fireworks!

2. Know how and when to access the special shooting modes

Learning to rock your point and shoot means that you don’t have to understand the “science” behind ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.  But if you want the best possible images, you really need to know how to access the special shooting modes.  This is your only way to tell the camera how to set the correct settings for you.  Foliage mode in my camera enhances colors!  Snow mode ensures your images don’t have the dreaded blue/gray color cast common in snow photos.  Kids and Pets is particularly good for moving subjects…like kids and pets :)  Knowing how to select the right “shooting mode” for your conditions will ensure that you get the best possible photos!

3.  Sometimes the instructions in the manual really stink

I was very intrigued to finally take the time to figure out what my camera’s “manual” mode is capable of.  What does my manual say?  “Allows you to select settings yourself, such as the exposure compensation, white balance, or my colors.”  Then it tells me how to set it to manual, and that’s it.  nothing else.

huh?

Well, turns out that in manual mode, I can specify a metering mode!  I can set the shutter speed, and even white balance!  The instructions are written to explain the mechanics of how it works, but they don’t begin to explain what the camera is capable of.  So be sure to get out and play, play, play!  (oh, and for what it’s worth…I’ve kind of decided that manual mode isn’t worth the effort on my camera.  Especially with so many special shooting modes available!  I did learn how to use many more features though after I got out and tried it.)

4.  Read about your camera’s focusing modes

You don’t want to leave this to chance.  Understanding how your camera grabs focus is critical to ensuring you get quality shots.  Most point and shoot cameras have a “face detect” focus option, that is a good choice for most all-purpose photo situations.  Be sure to understand how your face detect works if this is the mode you prefer.  My camera even allows me to toggle between numerous faces detected in the image to specify the one I’d like to have in focus.  You want the birthday boy in focus, not the random neighbor standing next to him :)

5.  Check out your macro mode

Hands down, the feature that I was most pleasantly surprised with was my macro mode (for getting very close-up shots).  I love doing macro with my dSLR and find that I’m very naturally drawn to beautiful flowers, interesting bugs, etc.  I rarely scrap them – but I have tons of them on my hard drive, LOL!  I first attempted macro shots with my camera in full “auto”, normal shooting mode and got this:

Then…by simply pressing a button twice to go into Macro mode, I got these!

I hope you all enjoyed learning a little bit about  how to “rock what you got” :)  Thanks for stopping by…SP will be ‘checking-in’ with you tomorrow!!

We’ve just wrapped up an amazing Spring Break week here at our house, and the weather was absolutely spectacular!  We’ve all got the end-of-vacation blues however, and lucky for me browsing through the gallery was the perfect pick me up!  You guys are all doing an amazing job with Project Scrap and Kylie’s incredible Easy-as-Pie Template Challenge 21!  As usual – the gallery is full of creative and inspiring layouts!

This amazing layout (Pretty Girl) by Amber totally caught my eye:

I just love the soft pink and brown and the wonderful photo treatment!  and how GORGEOUS is sweet little Hannah?!   There are many beautiful details here too, from the scalloped border to all the stitching and the subtle white floral stamp.  It’s sweet and happy and perfect for LOTW!

Congratulations Amber! You have been emailed a $10 gift card to the Shabby Shoppe (please check your spam folder if you don’t see it). Hope you have fun shoppe-ing!

Thanks for joining us today!  We will see you again on Wednesday! :)

Before we get down to business, I just have to mention that I recently returned from a two week whirlwind trip through Asia.  I had the incredible opportunity to visit India, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China!  It was so amazing – and so very different from the Western culture here in the States.  I have a MILLION pictures to go through and scrap – so I will definitely be sharing pictures soon.  But the one thing I wanted to mention here today was something I noticed about the cultures of India and Thailand: and amazing ability to appreciate beauty and incorporate beautiful things into everyday life.  Fresh cut flowers and beautiful carvings and sculptures everywhere.  I just couldn’t do a post about inspiration without reflecting on what I experienced there and thought I would share just a few photos with you – my way of hopefully sharing something beautiful with YOU today :)

Anyhow – on to business!

Two sites I love to explore on a regular basis:  Banana Republic and Pottery Barn.  *sigh*.  So much eye candy!  If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time pining over pretty things on-line, whether through sites like the two I mentioned, or even through Pinterest or design blogs.  Well, did you know that your favorite fashion and design sites are also an incredible source of inspiration for scrapbooking as well?!  The same design aspects that draw you to a room design, a beautiful outfit, or a delicious new handbag can be appied to your scrapbooking!  The trick is knowing how to look :)

Let’s work with this beautiful room from Pottery Barn:

This beautiful room looks similar to my living room – well, minus the gorgeous furniture…and the cool decorative accents…plus my living room is drowning in Legos at the moment (my kids’ most recent obsession! which reminds me, if you have any girl lego lovers…check THESE out! FINALLY some cool girl Legos!).  OK, so it turns out this room looks NOTHING like my current living room, LOL…but it is something I would love to come home to.  To me, it is beautiful and comfortable and completely inviting.  I actually bookmarked it because I want to transform my space into something like this.

Let’s look at the building blocks that make up this room – and see how they can apply to scrapbooking along the way!

• Start with a neutral base.  If I were to describe this room, i wouldn’t say “white” – but notice that the wall color and the sofa – the two biggest elements – are actually white!  This is an excellent way to create a versatile foundation upon which you can add many types and styles of elements (which we’ll get to later).  For my scrap pages, I almost always begin with neutral paper – either white, off white, or kraft.  This lets me get started on my page without having to tackle the more significant design consideration like pattern and color.
• Consider the critical design points. In this room, the windows are very large and somewhat dominant in the space.  Notice how the colors chosen coordinate well with the earthy greens that occupy much of the window space?  The view out the windows doesn’t compete with the design of the room – in fact, the are very complementary.  In scrapbooking, your photos are like these windows.  It’s important to look at your photos and work with the colors and mood set by the images rather than selecting design elements that will compete with them.  Additionally, notice the overall “softness” to this room?  Nothing really has sharp edges (the table and the sofa are more rounded),  the chunky cushions and the delicate greenery are all very “soft” and organic feeling.  If I were creating a scrapbook page with this theme in mind, I’d use rounded edges for my photos and papers so as not to introduce any harsh corners or edges that will take away from the overall feel of comfort from this page.
• Add texture. This is a really important, yet easy to overlook aspect of designing a space as well as a scrapbook page!  Just look at how many types of textures and materials are present in this small space:  wood, fabric, metal, glass, the woven rug under the table, the foliage and greenery from the plant in the vase.  These various textures and tremendous depth and dimension to this space, and they’ll do the same for your scrap pages as well!  Sure, it’s easy and tempting to throw together a page and focus on the basics:  paper, photos, maybe an alpha for a title.  And if we’re feeling really creative, maybe a cluster of flowers.  But how about challenging yourself to add more texture?!  Think about leaves, metal elements (like bookplates, brads, photo turns, etc), ribbons and strings.  And don’t forget that you can add texture right in your title!  Remember that you can re-color things (see this awesome tut from Casharina!)…so really think about the textures you want to incorporate and seek them out for your page. Some of my favorites:
  • Gracie has that amazing canvas alpha (that I LOVE to ink the edges of, for added depth!)
  • Goose Bumps has a fab black acrylic alpha
  • An Affair to Remember has curly ribbons, plastic buttons, and felt hearts
  • Barefoot has cool rustic metal photo corners and star
• Add color. This is often something I do last on my own pages.  And if you look at this room, you can see that the color is really only introduced with the decorative elements!  The pillows are the biggest source of color and pattern, with the palette continued into the smaller decorative items placed around the space.  On my own pages, I like to get the neutral background in place, then I add the photos and even the title, then I’m ready to add in the pop of color.  Shabby Princess creates such beautiful papers in her kits that I frequently use papers to add that pop of both color and pattern.  And don’t forget that a little pattern and/or color goes a long way!  Just look at this room – you really feel the green and the blue, but there just aren’t many colored elements actually there.  A few blocks of patterned papers (think: pillows), plus a few ribbons, buttons, strings in the selected color is really all you need!

You can use this same analysis for taking inspiration from clothing and purses as well!  Pay attention to the stitching, the types of buckles and adornments, the width of straps/belts (are they delicate or chunky?)…you get the idea!  Just take a few moments to look at the parts that make up the whole and eventually seeing these inspirational details becomes second nature!

I also wanted to add that it would be an interesting exercise for you to go and pick out your favorite room (they have many different types of rooms to choose from) just to analyze it and get a better understanding of your own personal style.  For me, the comfort and casual feel to this room are 100% my style.  The same applies to my scrapbooking!  I rarely use block/geometric designs, preferring to kind of throw everything on the page and see where it lands :)  Understanding your style will make it easier for you to stay true to your style – and that means creating more things that you LOVE. :)

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you are all having a wonderful week!  SP will drop by tomorrow for a ProjectSCRAP check-in!

I typically bring you lots of photography posts, and one thing I’ve learned from perpetually viewing the past 2 years of our lives through the lens of my camera, it’s that our lives are FULL of thousands of incredible moments.  I’ve spent hours trying to master technique, work on composition,  and create incredible portraits of my family.  I’ve captured the smiling faces of my kids, the happy moments like parties and birthdays, and all usual big moments each year.  I’m SO thankful to have the shots I have!  But when I look through my scrapbook pages, I feel like something’s missing.  I feel like someone looking through my album 40 years from now won’t get a true sense of what we’re all really like.  

I feel like I have lots of photos and pages that capture what we are, but not enough that capture who we are.  

So this year I’m making a conscious effort to document REAL LIFE,  as it is right now.  Imperfect and amazing and overwhelming and even a  little messy.  But I want it to be true and honest, and I want someone looking back through these pages one day to know that my husband is an amazing dad because he sits and plays with the kids, really pays attention to them, every day.  And that my amazing, beautiful daughter has a shy side that I sometimes don’t understand.  That I worry that some day she’ll get taken advantage of or pushed around by the more aggressive kids.  And how about me?  I think I’m only in two photos in all of last year , and there’s truly nothing in my albums that gives any indication who I am.  That I’m strong, independent, and brave – but also disorganized, impatient, and sometimes overwhelmed by everything going on.  

So – This year I’ll be making a few changes.  

1.  No more waiting for the perfect moment to take a photo.  My son has ketchup on his face and chocolate milk on his shirt? Yep, that sounds like him.  So it’s a perfect photo of him right now.  Clutter on the counter on a Wednesday night while my daughter is doing homework?  Yep, probably.  It’s a perfect time to take a photo of what our evenings are like – because it’s our real lives and I never want to forget these days.  

2.  More thoughtful journaling.  I’m going to try to avoid the obvious “so cute, so loved, growing so fast” comments I tend to make in my journaling, and really focus on including little bits of who they are right now.  That my son is obsessed with potty words and my daughter absolutely loves to be tickled when I wake her up in the morning for school.  

3. Pages without photos of people.  Or perhaps even pages without photos at all!  Not every page as to have an amazingly cute shot of one of my children smiling.  Seriously.  I want them to be able to look back and have a sense of what life was like  – including the things that make up our lives right now.  

So my theme for the year is going to be REAL.  I want to capture real moments, real things, and the real thoughts that make up the essence of who we all are right now.  I created two new layouts to get started!

This one is so important to me.  I can’t believe I haven’t scrapped about my husband’s diabetes before now – it’s something very big that we live with.  It’s also amazing to me just how far medical treatments have come in just the 15 years we’ve been together!  I love the idea of having a little time capsule of what it is like to live with diabetes today.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if some day, in our children’s lifetimes, they find a cure?

And on a more lighthearted note, this is another page I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time.  The pics aren’t perfect for sure – but they perfectly capture him as the true pack rat that he is.  He’s grabbing loads of sticks and leaves that he wants to keep, to take home to add to his “collection” (collection of JUNK, that is).  We hope it’s just a crazy phase he’s going through, but regardless – right now he is obsessed with keeping things.

I hope some of the things I’m sharing here today encourage you to share a bit more about yourself and your loved ones in your scrap pages!  If you have any layouts you’d like to share, please link back to them here in the comments so we can go leave you some love – and get inspired in the process! 

Thanks for stopping by today!  The FEBRUARY project SCRAP 2012 templates will hit the blog tomorrow…so be sure to look out for them!!

A long, long time ago on the blog I did a very basic primer on photography and understanding how ISO, Shutter Speed, and aperture (that f number) work together to capture light to expose an image.  The basic idea is that you want to set those three variables in such a way that your camera meter reads “0″, or it’s perfectly centered between positive (too much light), and negative (not enough light).

ISO is something that many beginning photographers don’t like to utilize in high ranges because either a) they’ve tried a high ISO photo and it didn’t turn out well (lots of noise), or b) they’ve heard from people not to use higher ISOs because their photo will be noisy!  Well, let’s demystify and debunk some of that today!

What I’ve learned about ISO:

1.  It is true that as you increase ISO, you begin to add “noise” to a photo.  How much noise is added and when the noise is introduced (at what ISO range) is somewhat camera dependent.  However, there are things you can do to mitigate noise!

2.  Not all noise is bad.  Seriously.  It’s far better to CAPTURE the moment at a high ISO than to not capture the moment for fear of an imperfect image.  Heck, all the photos from my childhood are either orange, polariods, or glued down into an album that has a plastic cover stuck to it.  So really, put it into perspective – is a tiny bit of noise in an image going to ruin it for future generations?  um…nope.

3.  There are steps you can take to make the noise as minimal as possible.  Let’s look at some of them next!

But first…what is noise?

That, my friends, is noise.  This is a section of a really crappy photo, one shot at a pretty high ISO (ISO3200) that I under-exposed on purpose to exaggerate the noise. I also picked the worst part of the entire image to show you because you can see both types of noise…regular old noise (grainy chunky pixels that shouldn’t be there) and color noise  (colors that don’t belong there – the flecks of pinks, greens, reds, etc that you see around this sample).

Typically you’ll get regular old noise in whiter, lighter portions of an image with the addition of color noise in the darker, shadowed areas.  In this particular example, because it’s that bad, there’s also color noise over the white portion as well.

So…what can you do to prevent un-necessary noise??

NO MATTER WHAT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOULD YOU UNDER-EXPOSE THE PHOTO.

That’s pretty much it :)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you actually should learn that you often have to over expose an image to capture it correctly. Slight over exposure is very easy to fix in editing software with simple sliders in  ACR, Lightroom, even Photoshop (here’s a post that covers basic adjustments in ACR).  And over exposing minimizes noise.

Another key reason why you need to over expose in many cases is that, well, the camera meter can be wrong. Well, it’s basically a computer so it’s never really wrong, but it can definitely tell you that something is “right” when it really isn’t.  There are two main reasons this happens:

1. Your metering mode.  I always shoot in spot meter mode because it takes a small, very specific portion of the image into consideration when it determines whether or not there is sufficient light.  Canon cameras use the area just around the center focal point and evaluate the light to give you a meter reading.   An alternative mode, called evaluative, considers a much larger area of the photo around that center focal point and gives you an “average” value for the entire area considered.  I typically photograph people – my kids – and I want their sweet little faces to be properly exposed.  Because of this, I want the camera to disregard everything around them and make sure the photo is exposed properly for their faces.  So I put the center focal point on their faces, adjust the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed until my meter says “0″, and then I shoot.

In evaluative mode, the area around that sweet little face is considered as well.  So if you have strong backlighting your meter will actually consider some of that brightness and determine that your average light value is higher than what it would get as spot metering on the face alone.  As a result the face will come out darker.  You can find many resources on-line to further (better?!) explain these modes, including your camera manual, but for now stick to spot or partial metering (partial metering is kind of in-between spot and evaluative).

2.  The color of your subject.  This one is really, really important so I’m illustrating it below.  Your camera is designed to give you a meter reading as if you are taking a photograph of middle gray (18% gray).  White reflects nearly 100% of light, black reflects nearly 0% of light, and middle gray is – you guessed it – in the middle.  But the world, fortunately, is not shades of gray.  Here’s a very common example/problem…WHITE.

In the series of photos below, I used spot metering and metered off the large white flower hanging down to your left.

In the far left image, my camera meter said I had the perfect amount of light to capture my image – assuming I was taking a photo of something 18% gray!  But I wasn’t…i was taking a photo of red and white flowers.

So – to prove my point – I changed my shutter speed, kept everything else the same, and took another photo when my meter was to the first dot past “0″.  This is called over exposing by 1/3 stop.  That image is brighter overall, and looks better than the one on the left.  I continued this, reducing my shutter speed to add 1/3 of a stop each time, until by the fourth photo I was one full stop over-exposed (according to my meter!).

The FOURTH shot is the best!  Want to know why?

This screen shot says it all.  My histogram shows that very little data in the image is blown (hitting up against the right wall of the histogram), and the portion that is blown is highlighted in bright red in the image itself.  It’s all stuff I don’t care about!  the back lighting in the window, the bright parts of the reflection on the floor…I’m far more satisfied having the flowers nice and bright even though some of the other portions of the image are blown.

Even if this post wasn’t about shooting at high ISO, it’s really important to know that a good SOOC (straight out of camera) image looks more like the photo on the right than the one on the left.  I could scrap this photo as-is without having to do a single thing to it!  Heck, if I really loved it (which I don’t, LOL), I could print it for my wall and hang it up.  Learning to master white balance and exposure in camera, without relying on editing, is the single most important thing for a photographer to accomplish :)

ok – so now we’re ready to tie this back in to ISO…

Here’s a close-up of the noise from the first and fourth images from the exposure sample above:

The general brightness is just much better in the image on the right, but if you look more closely you can see a few other differences.  The image on the left has color  noise on the bottom portion of the white flower while the image on the right doesn’t.  Also, the noise is much heavier, almost “bigger” looking in the neutral space behind the flowers in the image on the left.  The +1 stop photo has much finer, smaller noise.  And keep in mind – ALL of these images were shot with ISO3200, a relatively high ISO setting!

So – wrapping this up (you’re quite a trooper if you’re still with me, LOL!)…

1. PROPERLY expose your photos.  That sometimes means “overexposing”.

2.  Do not sharpen images with noise – it makes it SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I usually fix noise and then do some sharpening if it’s necessary, but they two kind of counter-act each other to watch closely as you make adjustments.

3.  Learn to use noise reduction in your editing software.  ACR has it, as does LR.  I regularly use the noise sliders in LR to reduce noise.  It’s so powerful, in fact, that it can virtually eliminate the noise altogether.   Here’s a before and after with noise reduction applied:

{After settings in the LightRoom noise reduction panel:  Color +18, Luminance +28).

4.  and final…do your own ISO test so that you know how high  you can go with your ISO with confidence.  Do a test just like I did here!

That’s all I have for you today!  Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or to share your own experiences in the comments section!

Join SP tomorrow for the launch of Project SCRAP 2012! Yay!