How to Have Fun with Your Bad Photos

Ever have one of those days? You bother to try to take some good photos of the kids and 99% of them come out bad. You take 100 photos, just hoping for that one good one to frame. But what do you do with the bad ones? You can’t throw them out… it’s your own kid. Let’s have some fun in Photoshop and Final Cut, turning those bad photos into a memento.

On this day, I took 65 photos of our pint sized model, using the very professional technique of a bedsheet over an armchair for a backdrop. At least I did use the tripod. I remembered to use sports mode on my point and shoot to get the absolute fastest shutter speed, and I set up whatever extra lights I could so that I wouldn’t have to use the flash.

Still, I wound up with about 60 lousy photos, and a handful of decent ones. Haven’t figured out how to position an infant incapable of holding their head up or smiling. Also, the point and shoot just doesn’t have a big enough sensor to capture the gentle ambient light at a decently fast shutter speed.

This is a perfect example of when a professional is needed. There is an art to composing a photo where the details of the humungous gown are almost as important as the cherubic infant. A real backdrop, studio lighting, and a professional camera (and talent) would have made a world of difference.

But, alas, these are the photos I took. So, off to Photoshop, where I downloaded a bunch of free actions from the Pioneer Woman. I played a bit with the Lovely and Ethereal action. I played a bit with levels and saturation. But kept coming back to my own action (which I probably learned from someplace else originally).

I duplicated the photo layer, changed the blend mode to overlay, added an 8.5 pixel gaussian blur, and lowered the opacity to 77%. Then I simply dumped the whole folder of bad photos into a batch process. Here’s what the top photo looked like afterwards.In retrospect her color looks a bit red, but these were the bad photos, so who cares? It’s much, much easier to dump all 60 photos into a batch process than to fiddle with each one.

Next, I took the entire folder of photos and brought them into Final Cut Pro with a duration of .5 sec. I added a slug (black clip) at the beginning and created a simple title in Livetype. I then added a song with a strong beat to go with short cuts of the photos, and voilà: instant bad photo memento. See below:

This movie can easily be replicated without going through Photoshop or Final Cut. Most consumer movie editing software has some way of handling photos and adding even a basic title. Remember, your photos tell your story, be it sentimental, hilarious, or simply your everyday existence. This story happens to be titled, “Get Thee to a Professional Photographer!”