Pictures for holiday card

For those of you who do your own pictures.... do you do something special to make them look a little more professional, or do you just put your favorite shot(s) into your holiday card?

Re: Pictures for holiday card

At this point whatever I can get I will put on. My kids are almost 3 and d6 and impossible to get pictures of. We dont have the money for proffesional pictrures this year either.

Re: Pictures for holiday card

I put in my favorite shots this year & they were unedited.

In the past, I've played with the colors to make them more vibrant. If you're using photoshop, Ctrl+M brings up Curves. You can select Auto or do a manual correction. Sometimes I brighten up photos & kick up the contrast.

There are a ton of free actions (which is essentially a macro someone creates for photoshop) out there but after using them on my Halloween card to my mom & MIL, they weren't thrilled with them.

edited - my avatar photo was edited because my son wasn't looking at the camera so I took his eyes from the shot a split second before & stuck them on this one.

I also think if you put a border around them or a "stroke effect" which is just a faint outline, it makes them pop a little more.

Message edited 12/5/2008 7:28:10 PM.

Re: Pictures for holiday card

I was going to get photoshop this year and do some posed / photoshopped shots for the card, but we got a great shot at Thanksgiving in front of DH's family's christmas tree, so we just used it as is..