Large format print

 1. 18 by 24 final print: I really wanted a picture with my boys in it for my large print. I tried all semester to get something just right...but it is very hard to get a 2 year old to hold still and a 4 month old to smile in every picture. I ended up cheating a bit by taking elements from three different pictures and making them look like one. I'm pretty sure I used aperture priority for all three pictures. I first edited all of the images in raw. I adjusted the fill light, color balance, blacks, saturation, vibrance, and sharpened their eyes. I also tried to HDR the photos by the canal, but they ended up a little more pixely, so I smoothed the faces and clothes a bit with the paintbrush in photoshop. The background shot (of nature park) is flipped because I wanted to cover up a sun spot by placing the boys on top of it. Then I took Emmett's head from the picture he was smiling in, quick selected it, pulled it on top of his other head in the picture he wasn't smiling, and sized it correctly while holding shift. Next I color matched the three boys (now with Emmett's new head) to the photo of nature park. Then I quick selected the boys and the cement they were sitting on and pulled them on top of the photo of nature park. After I refined my edges with the paint brush (by painting with the black/white to get rid of extra edges that should have been left out), I was finally done. Then I made sure the size and resolution was correct (18 by 24 and 150 pixels). YAY! Below are the pictures I used to create the final image.

 2.Emmett Smiling: 11/3/2010; 9:16 AM; Rexburg; f/14; 1/60 sec; Sony A330

 3. Chase/Bridger smiling: 11/3/2010; 9:18 AM; Rexburg; f/14; 1/80; Sony A330

 4. Nature Park: 11/4/2010; 5:25 PM; Rexburg; f/18; 1/60; Sony A330

5. Flowers 12 by 36: 11/3/2010; 4:59 PM; Rexburg; f/13; 1/125; Sony A330
For both my pictures, when I printed the drafts they were much darker and bluer than on my screen. I realized that by switching them to print CMYK the change happened. I compared it on the screen to RGB and it looked a lot worse as CMYK. For the final large print I printed RGB and I was much happier. For this shot I actually got some flowers at Broulims. I love gerbera daisies and wanted some pretty ones (and of coures I couldn't find any outside in Rexburg right now). I took the photos outside with natural light on aperture priority mode, and I adjusted the settings a bit in camera raw (saturation, vibrance, clarity, fill light, blacks). But overall they were a pretty bright orange to begin with. Then I cropped them to the size I wanted and fixed the resolution. I think the resolution ended up being 107. The end.