Digital Photos Touch Up Guide
Thanks to the versatility of digital photography, there is perhaps more to learn about after the photograph is taken than there is when taking the picture itself. How exactly do you touch up your raw digital images? How do you lighten a dark image, correct ‘dirty spots’, crop an excessive background and more? Since most digital photos call for some level of enhancements before final output, here is a list of the more basic modifications that night have to be made to your digital images.
Step 1: Start Up Your Image Editor The first step, of course, is to fire up your favorite image editing program. For beginners, it\’s best to get a program like Ulead PhotoImpact. It\’s a great tool that allows you to achieve professional photo effects using simple, easy-to-follow steps.
Step 2: Remove Red-Eye If you\’re taking photos of people, chances are you may have taken a photo with red-eye problems. This is easily removed with image editing software. In Paint Shop Pro, select the Red-Eye Removal tool in the menu and voila, the program does all the work for you. In Ulead PhotoImpact, there\’s an equivalent tool called Remove Red Eye in the Tool Panel.
Step 3: Rotate and Crop If you\’ve taken a photo in a wrong orientation, it\’s easily corrected with little loss in quality by using a rotate tool. You\’ll also want to do some cropping of your photo to remove cluttered surroundings that draw attention away from your subject. For example, I find cropping very useful if my subject is occupying only the middle portion of the photograph. Cut away the two sides of the picture and you have a much more professional look.
Step 4: Play with Color Editing software opens a whole world of color options to you. Experiment with color variations for a new and unique look for your image. You can make clouds purple, change your photo to black and white, add a rose hueany effect you might want. A good photo editing program should have an automatic color balance option to adjust color imperfections in your photos.
Step 5: Blurring Effects Some pictures can be enhanced by using a blurring effect. In this case you would select unimportant areas of the photo to softly blur out to draw more focus to the subject of the photo. An example would be to blur out the background leaves of a picture of a butterfly.
Step 6: Sharpen Up Sharpening the image is the next step in the photo touch up process. You cannot sharpen an out of focus image into clarity contrary to popular belief. The best way to utilize the sharpen tool is to selectively sharpen just a portion of an image such as a person’s eyes. Leave the unimportant areas unsharpened to give the focus to your selected area.
Step 7: Resize Depending on your needs, you may want to resize your photo. If you\’re emailing a picture to a friend, you\’ll want to resize the picture down to a much smaller size. If you\’re printing the photo on a greeting card, you can scale down the image to the size of a 4×6 print.
Step 8: Save Your Work You’re almost there. Now just remember to save your work in the proper image format. Use the larger TIFF image format to preserve all details for further image editing. If you just want to e-mail your pictures or upload them to your website, the JPEG image format would work best.
Conclusion Alrighty then! Now you know the secret to touching up and preparing your raw digital photos for output. I\’d say that not all the above steps are truly necessary in a given situation. Remember to use your discretion to see which is necessary. Don\’t be afraid to experiment and learn - practice makes perfect when it comes to touching up your photos.
