In This Lesson We Will Cover: Simple Image Editing Techniques Photo Editing Programs Using Photofiltre to Edit Photos Improve Yo
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In this lesson we will cover: Simple image editing techniques Photo editing programs Using PhotoFiltre to edit photos Improve your technique I think we all look at the screen of our ‘so clever’ digital camera and take what we think is the perfect photo. But then we find that on a large screen it is not quite a perfect as we thought. Maybe it is a little bit dark, the sky is overexposed, there is a pole sticking out of Aunty Maud’s head, the subject is right off to one side or the image is fuzzy and out of focus. Or we find some wonderful old photos of our grandparent’s wedding. And they are just a bit faded and have some nasty brown spots on your grandmother’s nose. If the image is out of focus, you are out of luck.There are some programs which claim to fix this, but all they give you is a slightly less fuzzy photo which is still not good enough. All the other problems can be fixed with the right software. In this lesson we will look at the simple fixes you can make to improve your photographs. Once you are familiar with those you will find it easy to learn the more advanced techniques. Simple editing techniques The following techniques are simple but they do make a huge difference to the overall result. Before you alter any photo, save it with a different name using the ‘Save As...’ command in the ‘File' menu and work on that file. Never alter your original photo. These editing tools can be applied roughly in this order to make the most of your photograph. 1. Straighten your photo by rotating it by small angles until it is level. The ocean does not run downhill. 2. Crop your photo so the subject occupies most of the space. This means marking the area you want to keep and getting rid of anything outside the crop lines. 3. Brightness/Contrast: this is the easiest and most widely used technique. It does wonders for a too dark or a too light photo. The Adjust Levels command is similar to brightness and contrast, but gives you much more control over the tonal range. ‘Adjust Levels’ shows a histogram of the light levels in your image.A histogram is a graph which plots the number of pixels in the image (vertical axis) against brightness value (horizontal axis). This histogram shows shadow detail towards the left because there are few pixels that are bright and so the vertical lines are small or non-existent. On the right it shows highlight detail where the lines are taller. You can adjust the levels by dragging one of the sliders.There is no right or wrong way of dragging – if you don’t like a change you make, then put it back. Many programs have an ‘Autolevel’ command which automates the process for you. They may not always please you and you can undo any change you make. 4. Hue and saturation controls are used to control the colour content of a photograph. Hue determines what the colour is and saturation alters the strength of the colour. Original photograph ‘Hue’ control used to change ‘Saturation’ control used to the large pink spot to blue make all the colours stronger 5. Sharpening an image will often give a much better look as sharpening makes the image crisper and less grainy. But be careful not to over-sharpen and make the image look artificial and the colours ‘unreal’. Original photograph Sharpened photograph Over-sharpened photograph 6. Most image editors are able to remove ‘red eye’ caused by the camera’s flash. Some do it automatically and other manually . 7. It is important to re-size a photograph if you intend sending it by email. This is different to cropping.Resizing keeps the entire image in the photo but makes the dimensions of the whole photo larger or smaller in proportion. Photo editing software To apply these effects to your photographs you will need a program. Adobe Photoshop is the world’s leader in digital imaging software(or so they say). And if you have about $1500 to spare, it is an excellent choice.But you are paying for an immensely complicated professional program and most of us ordinary mortals will not use a fraction of its features. If you like the idea of Photoshop, but have a little less cash to spare, there is a cut down version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements and it will have everything you need and probably more. You can buy Photoshop elements for about $90 if you shop around. There are free programs which do almost the same job. Probably the closest thing to Photoshop is a free program called GIMP.It is available here: http://www.cnet.com.au/downloads/soa/GIMP/0,239030384,10495810s,00.htm (Yes, this is a safe site.) But if you just want to do a little tweaking, there are other, simpler and still free programs. I have Photoscape on my computer and it is very good, but is not so easy to use. So I went and had a look at lots of free programs and after I rejected most of them: Paint.net – the simple intuitive interface wasn’t for me – I even had trouble opening a photo to edit and it made my test photo look worse than it was before I started. Imageforge – impossible to use. Irfanview, XnView, Picasa – too simple to do any serious editing as they do not allow editing of pixels. They are good for viewing your photographs. Since Windows has an image viewer built in there is no point in downloading another program to look at you photos. After that, I found PhotoFiltre and decided it was just right – not too big andcomplicated and not too trivial.You can download it for free here (also a safe site): http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm Make sure you untick the box that will install Ask toolbar and hijack your home page.They have to make money somehow, but you probably don’t need Ask. So for the rest of this lesson I am going to show you how PhotoFiltre performs the simple editing steps from the beginning of the lesson.But don’t give up if you don’t have it and don’t want it. Mostly, the controls and actions are the same in any other good photo editing program. All you have to do is investigate the menus on your program and you will find the same controls. Using PhotoFiltre Warnings 1. Save your image with a new name before you start editing. This is important because if you save the file with the same name, you will lose the original, which can be used as a backup in case of editing errors. Although the edited image may look better, you may at some point need the original. And you might even make the photo look worse and not want to keep the edited version. 2. Save your work often. Since picture editors use a good deal of computer memory, this increases the chance of your computer crashing. If the computer crashes before you save your work you will lose all the changes you have made. 3. Make sure you maximise the screen before you start. There is no point in editing when your picture is too small to see the changes you make. (The centre button at the top right if you have forgotten). Open the program. You will see the toolbars and menus you will use for editing. Many of the simple editing commands are on the toolbars, but once you become more proficient at editing your photographs, you will find there is much more in the menus. 1. Start by opening a photograph and then ‘Save as’ to make sure you don’t destroy your original. 2. It is best to straighten next, because once you straighten you have to crop anyway. To straighten your images go to ‘Image’ - 'Rotate’ - ‘Free Rotate’ and, depending on how crooked the image is, rotate by 1 degree. If that is too much, undo that step and try 0.5. There is no secret formula for finding how much to rotate. After a while experience will help. The whale photo on the left was rotated by 1 degree to produce the photo on the right. Notice that you have to re-crop the photo to remove the white edges (I have made them black here so you can see them.) The ocean may not be quite straight yet, but it will give you an idea of how much rotation you get for 1 degree. I rotated the photo clockwise or to the right. If you need to go the other way, choose -1 for the angle. 3. Now decide if you want to crop your image. To select the part of an image you want to KEEP, click on the selection tool and then draw a rectangle on the image (left click to start, drag and then let go the button). Remember, everything outside the lines will go. Once you are happy with your selection, go to the ‘Image’ menu and select ‘Crop’.Or right click on the image and select ‘Crop’. If you change your mind, use Undo or CTRL – Z to go back. You can also go to the ‘Selection’ menu - ‘Set shape’ and select a shape other than a rectangle. You will finish up with some white space around your photo (I have made the edges black so you can see the result).