Photoshop: Before and After (Apple Orchard)

The photos below are to show the alterations I made in photoshop. The first photos are completely un-altered files. The second photo displayed is what it looks like after the altercations were made. (for better viewing click on the photo to enlarge it).

Before

After

I actually didn't make to many changes to this photo. I brightened the image up, making greens more green and reds more red, with very minor changes to the actual apples.

Before

After

In this group I did a lot more. The most obvious thing I did was brightened up the photo a little bit. Then I made the greens more green, and the reds more red. If you look at the first photo you can see some rotten apples and a couple on the tree branch with bruises, I took out the bruises and made them ready to eat apples. A lesser noticeable change I made was adding grass. There is more grass and less brown patches in the 2nd photo.

Before

After

This set I made the reds very rich. You might notice a few bruises that I changed. I also added a lot of greens. To give the photo more color contrast with the red apples up against the green grass (clovers), instead of the dirt.

Before

After

Before

After

This was a little more difficult process, for this photo. I brightened it, gave it more contrast. However all the work was trying to get the apples to work out right. I fixed up the apple the dog was chewing on. But when I adjusted the color for the dogs apple the other apples became a very fake red. So I have to create two images with separate altercations. The dog on the right is actually a whole in the duplicate photo. You are looking at a photo behind a photo. I had to do this, so I could apply specific things to the bottom image, and then the other altercations was just applied to both images, which was just fine. I am still trying to learn the best way to do things. 

It's easy messing with my photos doing simple color/brightness changes, but once I get into doing all this editing it gets more difficult. It's almost easy to just use iphoto to change the photos colors, etc. However I want to learn how to use photoshop better, because then in the long run, I can do a lot more.

I actually prefer my photos as natural as possible, however photoshop is used for many different things, and I need to use my photos to learn how to do all that other crazy stuff.