The Joy of CameraBag

I keep talking about this program, and here's a little illustration why.  I touched up a couple blemishes first on photoshop elements first, because camerabag won't do that (though it will crop, straighten, etc.)  But after 90 seconds or so of quick touchup, I loaded it into camerabag and had thumbnails the size of the small images above in over 100 choices.  What fun!  If you've seen "actions" for sale, you can see why I guess that's pretty much what this program is doing.  Saved sets of color and exposure settings all ready for viewing and picking your favorite treatment.  You can do batches too, and apply a filter to a series of photos to get the same effect on a whole shoot.  If you just are not satisfied with any of the choices they give you, you can tweak further, and name and save THAT for future use.  Wow.

The model is my eldest daughter, a product of the myspace (I KNOW no one is there anymore, but that's where it started) school of photography.  This generation is so comfortable with having their picture shot anywhere, anytime.  They know exactly what the pose will look like, cause they've seen it 6,000 times already.  Whereas my generation still stiffens up and grimaces a little bit more often than not.  Still, this group is so self conscious about how they look.  Make up and fake nails and hair (!), colored contacts and surgeries, to look how they think they should (not saying the model above has any is sporting any of that).  It leaves me so baffled about one thing- I started editing a few years back and thought they'd all want me to "fix" and touch up every photo.  They DON'T!  They post them all up there on facebook uncut and as is.  Maybe after all the "in person" retouching they believe they should be rated on how well they put it together before the picture was snapped? 

I don't know, but every shot I put up has a little weight loss and skin smoothing going on, sometimes even the makeup is after.  I keep it me, just better, like meeting me in a nicely lighted bar after a few drinks. 

I'm hoping the kids like this program.  I haven't heard from miss thing up there what she thought about these retouches.