If you listen to the experts in digital photography, even well meaning experts, you walk away with the idea that unless you are using expensive software like Aperture or Photoshop, you can not possibly make art or even a decent image from cheap tools like iPhoto. I have never been one to listen to the so-called “experts” much a lot of the time and this ignoring of the “experts” can give you an edge in creating really beautful art or just nice pictures to look at since we do not know any better.

For this article, I am going to use a basic snapshot that has very few redeeming qualities that might make you think it was “art” And to add insult to injury, I will be making “art” from this cast off image using nothing more than iPhoto and some basic understanding of how to really use iPhoto.

The cast off image as you can see in Figure 1, is just a basic snapshot of a child's sandbox with some toys scattered around. It has good contrast and strong elements which will help in the overall picture.

Figure 1 Starting point of iPhoto Art Image

Now to be very honest, I did take several images of this scene working with the shadows and which toys were in the picture but at the time, none of the pictures really turned out the way I had hoped.

This is a trick number one which I follow a lot myself. I take many pictures just to “play” around and to see what I might catch. I try different angles, depth of field, shutter speeds and exposures. In these images, nothing really caught my attention at first. I came back to the images a few weeks later and thought I might be able to do something with it as a memory image.

This is my second trick for you to use, I rarely delete ANY image which is why I have over 13,000 images archived. The reason for the “no delete policy” is that after a period of time, what seemed to be a hopeless image, might be used in something else or be used as a basis of a new image. A case in point is an image that I shot from a moving bus in Paris France, through the glass window, of a window with the reflections of other windows in it. While the composition was cool, the image was too blurred to be of any real use since it was literally a snap and shoot as the bus did a California stop. You can see the basic image in figure 2 below.

Figure 2 Slight blurred Paris Picture

This image sat in the archive for almost a year and every now and then I would go back to it and sigh regretfully because I really liked the idea of the windows in a window. As it happened late one night (not a dark and stormy night), I was killing time since I could not sleep and came across this image again. This time I loaded it into photoshop CS and started to play with it, without any real idea in mind to what I would do. I ended up turning the image into a “watercolor” image which took advantage of the already present blurriness of the image. I used several different filters to get the effects I wanted and by 3am, I had my keeper image which many people have ended up really enjoying. Most are very surprised when they get the history of the image. You can see the results in Figure 3

Figure 3 Final Version of Blurred Paris Picture

Now, why did I not use this Paris picture for my article? Because I used Photoshop due to the layers capability and some filters that iPhoto does not offer. I use the tool I need and in this case, Photoshop was the tool I had that would do the job I wanted. When I did the same type of creation using iPhoto I had the idea that many people would not realize that iPhoto could in fact make really good art given a bit of help. So the lesson to take away is never delete your images unless they are REALLY bad images and lets get back to iPhoto and cheap art.

So I have my image from Figure 1, which has decent exposure and sharpness but not much interesting subject matter or appeal. But, in staring a the picture one day, I did think of a type of image that this one might work as and that was a memory picture. A memory picture is the type of picture that is intended to evoke memories of someone, a thing or an event in the past. They tend to look old by using techniques like sepia toning or B/W conversion and the like. For this image, I wanted to evoke the feelings of childhoods past but with present day toys. So I knew I needed to adjust the colors and figure out a way to bring the focus of interest which is the toys to the center of the image.

Before you change anything, back up the image!!! Many times the image software will not change the original but you really, really. REALLY do not want to trust that so always make a backup of any image you are about to manipulate.

The first step is to clean up the image with a light cropping of the image to clean up the edges and to make sure the picture is oriented correctly, use the straighten tool from the iPhoto Adjust palette. You can see the Adjust palette in Figure 4

Figure 4 –Straighten tool in Adjust Palette

Depending on the image, I will take the time to sharpen the image some, normally around 20 percent but it really depends on what I plan to do with the image. In a normal situation, sharpening is the past thing to do just before you print the image. But we are not dealing with “normal” right now so there are no hard and fast rules. In this sample since I want a dreamy or memory image, I will be softening the image later so sharpening it right now really does not do much for the end picture.

Now, that we have our basic image cropped and straightened up, we can move on to adjusting the colors in the image. Remember that the style of image I want in the end will not have vibrant or new looking colors, I want them to be faded out some. So let me introduce you to a second adjustment palette in iPhoto called “Effects”. Our next few adjustments will come from this tool. In figure 5, we see the Effect palette and all the choices it offers to us.

Figure 4 – Effects Palette in iPhoto

We have quite a few choices and we have to remember that the changes are culative so as you choose a effect, it will stay in place if you add a second effect or increase in intesity if you choose the same effect a second time. It is this addative effect that we will be using to our advantage to age our print. My first effect is to “Boost Color”. This adds to the primary color saturation and gives us a good color base to use for our next effect which is “Antique”. I used this effect once to reduce the overall colors but since I had boosted the primary colors, they stay a bit brighter than the rest. It also warms the overall image with a bit of a yellow cast.

Now I want to reduce the colors a bit more since the image is still too bright for what I had in mind, to do this I used the “Fade Color” effect which reduces both the yellow cast plus the colors. But my primary colors stay a bit brighter but now they look like an old image since in a real picture, not all colors fade evenly.

My final two choices of effects from this palette are the “Vignette” and the “Edge Blur” effects. I first apply the Vignette to darken the corners which makes the eye want to move to the center of the image. Then I use the Edge Blur to blur out the Vignette for a smoother transition. At this point, the image is almost finished and you can see how we are very quickly moving from an uninteresting snapshot to an image that qualifies as “art”.

Now I have two final adjustments to make and both are back in the Adjustment Palette. I use the sharpness adjustment to blur just a bit the overall image to get that dreamy look and then I use the temperature adjustment to warm up the entire image a bit. Virtually all of these adjustments are as much of an art form as technical skills and depends heavily on your own personal taste which is why I am refraining from saying a precentage of each adjustment. In Figure 5, you can see the final image which I feel is now very presentable and would look nice printed and framed on anyone's wall.

Figure 5 – Final Adjusted Picture

As you can see yourself, I did not use any expensive software or fancy tools to do this manipulation, I just used the features available in iPhoto. Anyone can do this type of manipulation with a bit of thought and a strong dose of experimentation. And once you have created your masterpiece, you will want to share it with friends and family so I would highly recommend the use of a photo sharing site like Flickr.com or Fototime.com. I personally like Flickr since it is more of a community than just a photo site but that is entirely up to you. Now, go have fun with iPhoto and never feel embarrassed that you are not using the fancy software again.