Thursday 19 May 2011

Beautiful Barcelona

I've been neglecting my blog recently ... too few scrapbook pages that I can share straight away and I'm not that keen on teasing with peeks, so I didn't know what to post. Then I remembered that I have a gazillion photos from our 3½ days in Barcelona after Easter and I haven't shared any of them. So here are a few pictures along with a couple of queries I could do with answers to:

Fruit stall in La Boqueria - good enough to eat!
What on earth are these????
Having read all sorts of awful stories whilst researching the city, Hubby & I were completely paranoid about being the victims of pick-pocketing or mugging.  Fortunately we came home unscathed and now the kids feel that we wound them up unnecessarily with all our warnings ... Were we safe because we took precautions or because it isn't any worse than any other city?  I'm quite very glad we didn't get proved right, but not sure they'll ever listen to our advice again ... oh, wait, they never do listen, so no change there then!

Now that's what I call a buoy!
One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to Park Güell - our brilliant bike tour guide, Buddha described it as being designed by Gaudi whilst he was high on something - it was certainly weirder and more wonderful than any other park we'd visited.  While we were there we spotted a Google bike so now we're wondering if, one day, we'll be able to see Hubby and No.1 Son in a Google tour of the park!

No.3 Child took her new camera (a purple Canon Powershot  SX210) and was also photographing like mad, but as she has yet to read the manual, a lot of her photos have been taken with "interesting" settings ... most frequently using Tungsten white balance!  This has given a blue glow to the photos which is a big shame, especially as I was hoping to use some of her pictures for scrapping with - it's nice to get another person's perspective.

Feeling blue :D
Does anyone have any quick and easy ideas for correcting the colour balance on such photos?  I have PSE5, can just about use Picassa, have a Photobucket account and usually use HP Image Zone for cropping and printing my photos.

14 comments:

helena said...

Great photos - love the Gaudi stuff

Removing the blueness - this works in PSE 8 and googleland says it is in PSE 5

on the top menues choose enhance then adjut colour then remove colour cast - there are then instructions to follow.

If that path does not exist in pse 5 then search for remove colour cast.

helena said...

oh and you might have to do the remove colour cast several times on some photos to get them how you want them

Sian said...

It's a lovely picture and Helena knows what she is talking about - I bet that'll fix it.

We had a quick tour of Barcelona from a Cruise ship once. I'd love to go back.

Lynn said...

Sorry can't help with phot0s but it sounds like Helena has given you the answer. Loved seeing your photos - Barcelona is somewhere I would really like to visit.

WendyB said...

Love all the photos, sounds like you had a wonderful time.

Have a play with your 'blue' photos. Copy the layer so that you can play safely and then try remove colour cast as Helena has suggested or perhaps try a warming filter which I think you have is PSE - or do both. You can easily remove layers if you don't like the effect and start again. I use PS CS so the options do differ but the key is to play (as long as the original is safe) :-)

Alison said...

Have been hoping to see some of your Barca pics! I haven't 'done' Parc Guell yet, but DD keeps promising me that we will do...it IS a beautiful city isn't it?
Alison xx

JulieJ said...

And I thought it was men who never read the manual! My daughter (age 7) loves trying out the settings - she's taugth me things I didn't know about my camera phone.
Her new born photos from the hospital had a blue cast (it was film not digi) and I used Shimelle's instructions on 'warmifying' to improve the colour in PSE so that I could scrap them on the same page as a warmer photo. You have to be careful doing this though - whites tend to go a little orange, but that's fixable too with layers and the rubber tool.
Can't believe this - it almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about LOL.
Leaving them as is is a scrapbook page in itself though.

happysnapper said...

send them me and i'll sort and send back

Denise said...

Looks like you had a lovely time.It's somewhere I've never been to but would like to.
I've got a colour/exposure tool in the windows viewer that I use (think it's windows seven )It's really easy and very effective at changing the colour.

Winnie said...

Sounds like a lovely trip - hope to see more photos. Sorry I can't help you with the colour cast, but sounds like you've got some good advice already.

Missus Wookie said...

Fun photos - have seen that park in so many friends photos it always looks great. Hope you can sort the colour cast out.

alexa said...

That looks like it was a lot of fun! The fruit stall is moth watering ... Well done on DD for snapping away. Who reads manuals anyway? :)

Jen said...

So gald you enjoyed Barcelona and didn't get stung - - we did - me and my mum - cost us £600 all told - well insurers!
Its the most amazing city - love your photos as they bring back memories for me. J

Unknown said...

Beautiful place!