Cooking Up Some Interest

I was idly fiddling with Photoshop CS3 this afternoon and thought I would have a little play with the Filter Gallery. I'm not normally one for over-using filters with my images, but I wondered if some shots could be improved with a little creativity. Here are three quick recipes for cooking up some interest in your pictures, even when they might seem pretty uninspiring to begin with.

Delicious Apple Tart

I started with this:
[Rather stody Apple Pie - two halves of an apple on a wooden chopping board]

Slightly dull, not much punch in the lighting. Here's how I cooked it up:

• Levels - setting the black and white points gave the image more contrast
• Filter Gallery - Watercolour

And the end result was a much better picture:
[Apple Tart - I like this much better, especially the edge of the cut half]

Accompanied by Sweet Music

I started with this:
[Discordant - the purple background isn't helping]

I liked the close up composition, but that background bothered me. Here's how I cooked it up:

• Levels - setting the black and white points gave the image more contrast
• Black & White - using the Maximum White option for more punch
• Filter Gallery - Glowing Edges

This is how it turned out:
[Sweet Music - a much more graphic shot, enhancing the shiny chrome]

Makes Perfect Dining Al Fresco

I started with this:
[Misty Morning - the village pond through the fog, in Histon]

It was atmospheric to a certain extent, (I used another from the same shoot for Day #44). But I wasn't so convinced about this one without some cooking:

• Levels - setting the black and white points gave the image more contrast
• Filter Gallery - Fresco

Which gave me:
[Al Fresco - an intriguing painterly effect]

I hope you liked my recipes. How did I choose the filter for each? Really, just by trying them out, looking at the preview and deciding whether they suited the images. That's the tricky part!

I shall be having a go at some other images in due course. You might like to keep an eye on my Flickr set, Fun With Filters, to see the results of my experiments.