I normally edit photos using Photoshop. However, I understand the average user is not going to spend the money, especially in this slowing economy, to obtain a professional photo editing tool to edit their everyday photos. In that spirit, I want to begin messing around with more accessible photo editing tools. Here’s my first pass.

Note: I highly recommend you click on the images and check out the larger versions of the images.

First the original,

And then the edit,

I tried to bring out the greens and darken the water a bit. I increased the contrast to bring out the detail in the gravel. The goal was to add some dimensionality and depth to the image. Here are some detail shots (original on the left, edits on the right) …

iPhoto did a nice job with the photos. However, I really missed being able to mask pieces of the image.