This is me.

Now, if you know me in real life, it’ll be very apparent to you I don’t actually look like this. Heh. Just wanted to be clear, because I find it annoying when people touch-up their photos to death and hope that people are convinced that they look the same in real life.

For 80% of my photos, which are random pics of places or events, or faraway shots of people and I, I’ll:
1) Resize smaller (as they’re massive when they come off my camera)

Um… that’s it 😛 I don’t alter the majority of my photos because 1) I’m too lazy and 2) my camera (Panasonic Lumix LX3) is awesome and I don’t feel the need to touchup.

BUT, for 20% of my photos, I digitally alter. These fall into two categories – either they’re too dark (eg. my food photography in dim restaurants), or they’re big close-ups of my face. Let’s face it, close-ups of your face are never flattering… all the imperfections are blown up and, frankly, bloody scary to look at.

So this is what I do:
1) Resize smaller (again, ‘cos they’re otherwise massive). My favourite width is 500 pixels.
2) Lighten and brighten. This is my single and BEST way to look better. Works for dim restaurant photography, and works amazingly for close-ups of my face. When I brighten the whole image, my skin looks nicer and my eyes look brighter.
3) Colour saturate. I like it because it makes the food look juicier and more attractive, and well, same for my face.

That’s it! Pretty easy, right? I don’t do other major photo-alterations because they take up so much time and I’m not very good at it. Once, I tried to ‘blur’ Chris’ freckles out and he got angry that I “de-freckled” him so I haven’t done it since – teehee! Actually, I didn’t even touch his freckles, I simply lightened the whole photo so they just disappeared! ROFL.

Anyway, this is the result of the 3-step approach above: