Before & After - Vintique

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By Jennifer Lynn Bishop of Rainy Day Doodle​

Recently I talked about some of the awesome features of Vintique, and promised you a more detailed “Before & After” post. While you may not be able to make every drab photo beautiful, I consider it a personal challenge to take one of my “okay” photos and transform it into something I would be proud to post on my blog.

Below is a photo I snapped on a walk one day in my neighborhood. It’s one that I thought would be really pretty at the time, but later I noticed the colors weren’t as bright as I saw them, and then there is a pesky ladder on the left that doesn’t quite capture the mood I was hoping for.

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​Original Photo - Unedited

My Process

I start out by cropping out the parts that I don’t want, while still framing the photo with that wonderful old tree. I also felt that the metal grill in front of the picnic table was a little distracting. I chose rather to focus on the lovely landscape behind these items. You do need to be careful not to zoom in too much, as you may lose quality, but here is my final crop, along with the rest of my creative process:

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Original

"Delight" Filter

I then start going through the filters to find one that sets the mood, for the most part, and then I’ll go in and edit the filter or add other effects to enhance it further. I chose the “delight” filter for this photo, as it brightened my dull photo and added more depth to the smaller details.

Editing Filter

Then I go in and edit the filter, turning off some of the color filters that give the photo a bit of a haze. I wanted to focus on brightening this photo and adding more contrast, rather than adding a vintage feel to it, as I normally would in Vintique.

Vignette

A vignette, although subtle, was added next. I chose an oval shape and edited it so that the area around the path of the smaller tree is darkened and brings the tree more into focus.

Frame

Most of the time, I like to add a frame to my work, especially if it's going in a blog post, and in this one, I added the thinnest black brush strokes on the edges so that it wasn't distracting, but added to the brightness.

Additional Editing

Sometimes after I add a filter, I get a better sense of the edit and whether I need to do anything else to the photo. In this case, i felt that it needed a different vignette. I changed it to the circular version and darkened the edges a touch further which in turn brightened the sun through the yellow leaves of the smaller tree.​

As you can see, you don't have to do a lot to a photo to make it sparkle a bit more. Also, you don't have to use a ton of apps to do it, especially when you've got an app as great as Vintique!

About the Author: Jennifer Lynn Bishop is a freelance graphic designer, artist, and iPhoneographer. Follow her artistic journey at Rainy Day Doodle.​

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