A word on taking pictures...

Folks, taking pictures OUTDOORS should be the first choice, using natural lighting with no camera flash. Indoor pictures never have good light. Colors just don't show up, and there are odd shadows when taken indoors. I'm telling ya, you'll notice a world of difference in the quality of your photos if you step outdoors to take the shot, preferably on a bright but cloudy day where the light is more diffused and doesn't cast stark shadows.

Failing that, if you absolutely have to take the photos indoors, you can use any number of digital photo applications to brighten up the pictures and make the colors show up a little better than the original. Plus, cropping out the extraneous stuff from the picture helps.

For example, the first picture, after cropping, looks like this:




And then after some correction to the lighting, you can see the colors a little better and the whole thing looks brighter: