I was rummaging through some old photos for this week’s Photo Friday and came across this snapshot of the Eiffel Tower.
(What’s funny to me is the idea of rummaging through photos…after all, all my photos are digital now. No physical rummaging necessary, as much as I love the idea of sifting through an old box of photos. But I digress.)
Here’s the original photo of the Eiffel Tower, taken from that top deck area you get to when you climb all seven zillion steps in hopes of canceling out the pain au chocolat(s) you just ate.
Here’s the altered version—and I mean “altered” in the simplest sense of the word. I changed it to sepia, then randomly adjusted the exposure and saturation levels. I work on a Mac, so it’s as easy as opening the photo, going to the Tools menu at the top of my screen, then going to “Adjust Color” and playing with the little slidebars they have for adjusting black and white levels, temperature, tint and so on. (You can do the same altering in iPhoto, but you’ll be working with the original only, and I prefer to make a digital duplicate of the picture to experiment with.)
It’s one of my favorite ways to make a so-so photo look interesting. And now I love the result of this vintage-y, steampunk-y, old-time photo and its possibilities as a background!
If you don’t have a Mac, and you don’t use Photoshop, you can still alter your photos on a PC by opening the photo, then clicking on Microsoft Office Picture Manager where you can adjust color, brightness and contrast.
Happy Friday!
