Hello Vicki, sure you can, I am honoured that you ask.

That is actually something that I want to post in my blog, I will provide a more detailed explanation there.

First of all, the background. This is a typical house in my country, they are made of 'adobe' (not sure if that is the name in english) which is a construction material made from mud and caws manure mostly, I think it is basically the same that was used in biblical times (they may still use it, but I have seen it in some Holly Week movies like Moses I think)

You use a tool that will modify the contrast and the illumination in your photos, it is called curves, ed has actually mentioned it, see where he mentions this: 'In the mean time, I have take the liberty of uploading a curves-adjusted version of that image above. ' at this post

I mention this, because this tool is very powerful, I honestly don't know very much about what it does, but it is always fun to open it and see what comes up.

So, as you can see, the tool is called 'Curves', I am a Gimp user, so I don't really know how to use it in other image processing applications. You go to color=>curves and a square with a diagonal line will appear, you start grabbing and moving that line and interesting things happen, the final result depends a lot on the basic colours and illumination from the original image (the histogram), but the principle is always the same.
For this specific image I moved the line in order to create an 's' shaped curve, then I just moved it until I liked what I saw.

I know that this is not a very technical or detailed explanation, but I actually can't say very much about it, I do will try to post some more examples and screenshots of the tool as soon as I can.

Hope it helps and let me know if you have any more questions.

Best regards,
Felipe

Note: I moved the post to another forum category, just to keeps this sorted.

Be the change you want to see in the world
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Hello, this are them:

http://www.illustratedphotography.com/photography-tips/basic/contrast

http://www.illustratedphotography.com/forum/other/too-dark

Let me know if you were able to see them.

Be the change you want to see in the world
-- Mahatma Gandhi

No, no, I think "cool" is indeed the correct technical term. It's right there in the Ansel Adams Dictionary of Photography, alongside "Thinga-me-bob" for that little rubber piece that fits over your camera's viewfinder and "fakery" for effects one can create in Photoshop or Gimp.

:) I like that dictionary too, it fits really well.

Thanks for your comment Vicky, that is actually one of my favourite pictures too, and it was taken without even thinking, which makes me like it even more.

I am glad that you where able to use Gimp, it is not as sophisticated as other editing tools, but it has all I have needed so far, it runs really well on my computer too.

Let us know if you have any questions about photo editing, I don't know very much, but ed sure does.

Be the change you want to see in the world
-- Mahatma Gandhi