We all remember getting our school photo taken, every year, with or without our (favourite) brothers and sisters ….. recalling the day our mother sent us off to school with freshly washed hair, a clean shirt and plenty of instructions to ‘look your best’ and ‘smile and not make silly faces’!!!!

But how many times did you get the picture back, only to see yourself looking gawky and nerdy and wondering why your mum was ordering 20 of them and planning to send them to every relative going in their annual Christmas card again?  Jeepers! What was she thinking?

If you had the chance to get rid of that massive spot on your chin, loose the glasses, scrap the braces or replace those speckled freckles with smooth, radiant skin, then how many of us may feel differently when looking back so fondly on those Year 3 school photos!

I recently read that there are around 30,000,000 school photos taken in the USA each year and of those, 50% are now being airbrushed!! YES THAT IS 50% being retouched and edited in one shape or form!!! Wow! That certainly tells me that this craze to look perfect just isn’t going away and is in fact more ingrained than ever in the younger generations!

Do I agree with air brushing children at such a young age to let them think that they can look beautiful in a school photo when they may well already look gorgeous to their parents? Well, that is a whole different question…….

No wedding would be complete without the official Wedding photographs.  Or would it?  These days more and more people are opting to keep costs manageable, especially in the current recession and deciding to ditch the professional ‘official’ photographer and ask a trusted relative or friend to do the honours and capture the special day with their own digital camera.

With the number of photos that each guest usually takes throughout the day, there is often a wide collection of great shots to look through after the happy moment and the bride and groom can look through at their leisure and choose the best ones.   Once selected, many couples are now choosing to take the top 20 – 30 images and have these digitally enhanced to really show them off in the best light.

Sky not blue enough? No problem.  Bridesmaid Sally upset she has a barrage of spots on her Aunties big day? No problem! No enhancement or detail is too small to change and pictures can look exactly how you want them to, quickly and easily from the comfort of your own home.

With all the techniques available these days, it is possible to completely transform even the most basic of snaps into truly magnificent works of art, that any bride and groom would be proud to display in their album and look back on for many years to come. It is now often the most affordable and easiest of options for Wedding Photographs without needing to compromise on the end results. Perfect day, perfect pictures!

My own digital photo album only seems to begin around 2006.  I am not sure if I was just a late entrant to arrive on the digital camera scene but for me, I owned my first super basic, digital camera at that point having previously been a very loyal ‘click and wait for the surprise pictures’ kind of girl!

For someone who regularly likes to snap away at even the purring of my pet cat, I am surprised I took quite so long to reach the dizzy heights of this new fangled technology.  But once bitten, there was no return and I now don’t go anywhere without my little digital camera in my purse, always just a click away from coming into its own and recording even the most uninteresting of events. 

It makes its entrance on every family holiday, much to the dismay of my teenage children, but in spite of their moans and groans, they are always the first to love looking back at the first images I have on my computer from 5 years ago!

We also still fondly reminisce at all the endless pages of photo albums we have stashed away in the upstairs back bedroom with great delight, but I so wish these photos were also digital and easily re-printable and readily on my computer for the DVD slideshow technology that is now available.  One thing is for certain, and that is, that capturing memories for looking back on as we get older, is something we all love to do whatever age we seem to be.

I have just seen a review of one of the latest software applications to edit photos (specifically RAW images) which is being used on the iPad and from what I have read, its not looking that slick just yet!  The Software is called PiRAWnha and is obviously for the more advanced photographer using RAW images ….it converts scanned images of your RAW pictures into little thumbnails from where you begin to edit the photo in its unprocessed RAW format.

The software seems not all that well equipped to touch up even any basic noise issues on the photo image for starters and is not nearly as good as its big brother the Mac at this basic function.  It also doesn’t seem to erase out the red speckles until the image is exported into a JPEG….. hmmm.  To be fair, the slowness of the actual iPad itself also doesn’t help matters as it doesn’t have enough RAM to deal with the more complex task of RAW image processing and a warning saying low- memory just keeps adding to the annoyance factor.

You may have around a 10 second wait sometimes whilst each picture re-renders and this slow process isn’t just limited to any one functionality!  Furthermore the interface also restricts images to editing only in portrait view (not landscape) so to conclude, at $10 for this application, there are actually a number of other much better apps available to use, or better still, why not just edit the JPEGs inside each RAW image instead??!  Maybe a little way to go still until this is worth using to edit your RAW photo images and adding it to your own wish list on the App Store.

When I was little I used to dream of having different coloured hair and eyes!  In fact, if the truth were known, I would actually fantasise (strong word I know!) of looking completely different to the freckle faced, gappy toothed child I once was!  If I could have used something back then as simple as a photo editing service or photo editing software to change how I continually looked in all my family albums, then as sure as eggs are eggs, I would have saved up my meagre pocket money to change things!!

These days there are an abundance of DIY photo editing software’s available if you have the time and inclination to get stuck in and know how to press the right buttons but it’s such a time consuming process, you can literally while away hours and hours of your evenings and weekends touching up and editing all your family snaps! 

From my experience, whenever I have done this myself, I find that after staring at my computer screen for over 10 minutes per image, you end up really loosing perspective on what actually looks better!  You get it to as good as you think you can, and then should really try to come back to it the next day in order to really compare and contrast objectively against the original version!

I think it’s not until you have actually looked at your work with a fresh pair of eyes, that you can properly see if your masterpiece really is all that you had hoped it would turn out to be!  And if not, which invariably it often isn’t, (for the real amateur newbie photo editor)…. then it’s the ideal time to call in the professionals and get the real technicians to do their magic and edit your photo for you, to look exactly the way you had always hoped you would at the beginning, the day the camera first went ‘click’!

Professional Photo Edit Service

Magic My Photos is a fantastic website that has been launched to offer superb and professional photo editing services to individuals across the world. Those who wish to gain the most from their treasured photos can now do so with the assistance of one of most dedicated teams of image editing experts. The brainchild of Caroline Syson, Magic My Photos offers unparalleled and equally affordable touch up and editing features to remove and change any unwanted aspects of your digital photography.

Providing a completely comprehensive image editing service, the friendly approach and satisfying results you will receive only reinforces the amazing reputation that Magic My Photo are achieving at this moment in time. Giving ordinary individuals the chance to transform any photograph, removing faults and imperfections, Magic My Photos operate quickly to present the perfect solution to dramatically improve your favourite pictures.

We invite you to follow our blog here, where you can read along with our informative and interesting posts relating to the world of photo editing. Whether you are a professional or amateur photographer or perhaps you simply you want to make amendments to your holiday photos, Magic My Photos have the resources and the expertise to deliver the finest, natural looking photo editing services possible.

Whether you have a single photo or wish to incorporate our services within a particular portfolio, Magic My Photos can deliver the ideal results to suit any budget, needs and requirements. Once more, thank you for stopping by and enjoy the blog!