You’re experiencing only half the fun of digital photography if you don’t focus on the amazing power of photo-editing software. Pictures that seemingly aren’t worth saving can be transformed into family heirlooms with a few simple steps.
To illustrate what’s possible, here are some tips for improving your digital images–whether taken with a digital camera and transferred directly into a computer, or taken with a film camera and then scanned.
The tips and accompanying pictures come from San Francisco photographer and author Mikkel Aaland (www
.cyberbohemia.com), whose most recent book is “Photoshop Elements Solutions, The Art of Digital Photography” from Sybex.
Aaland used Photoshop Elements Solutions from Adobe Systems ($99, www.adobe.com /elements) to perform these transformations.
But these tips apply to almost all photo-editing software. We’ve added an “also known as,” or a.k.a., entry at the end of each tip to give the appropriate terms used by four other popular photo-editing programs: Adobe PhotoDeluxe (www.adobe.com
/products/photodeluxe), ArcSoft PhotoStudio (www
.arcsoft.com), Microsoft Picture It (http://pictureit
products.msn.com) and Roxio/MGI PhotoSuite (www
.photosuite.com).
Cropping
Cropping strengthens the composition of an image and reduces overall file size with no degradation in quality. It’s also one of the easiest things you can do. This is how I cropped in Photoshop Elements:
1. I selected the Crop tool in the toolbox.
2. I clicked and dragged over the part of the image I wanted to keep.
3. The area to be cropped appears gray by default, which makes it easier to visualize how my image will look afterward. I then adjusted the size of the crop marquee by dragging the corner handle.
4. I clicked the Commit button.
A.k.a.: Called Trim in PhotoDeluxe; the other three programs use the term cropping.
Polishing dull images
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When I shot a photo of the Golden Gate bridge I had two things going against me: the wrong exposure, which resulted in a dark image, and a boring sky.
Fixing the wrong exposure was easy: I simply choose Enhance/Auto Levels from the Photoshop Elements menu bar. If this hadn’t worked I could have manually tweaked the exposure values using Levels or Variations controls.
Adding a dramatic sky took a little more work: First I started with an image of another San Francisco sky, this one containing more clouds. I used Photoshop Elements’ Clone Stamp tool to paint the clouds from one image to the other.
A.k.a.: Poor exposures can be fixed with the Variations control in PhotoDeluxe, Auto-Enhance in PhotoStudio, Correct Tint in Picture It or Color Adjustment in PhotoSuite.
Sharpening
Auto-focus cameras take much of the guesswork out of getting a sharp image, but they don’t always work the way they should, especially in low-light situations. With a fuzzy shot of a Bill Gates replica I took at the San Francisco Wax Museum, I used the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop Elements to make it look better. Just keep in mind that you can never make a really out-of-focus image look sharp.
A.k.a.: Unsharp Mask is also available in PhotoDeluxe; PhotoStudio offers Sharpen Filters, Picture It has a Focus control and PhotoSuite has a Sharpen feature.
Removing red eye
Red eye occurs when light from an on-camera flash reflects off the back of the eye, giving people a demonic look. Red eye is such a common problem that most photo-editing programs provide an easy-to-use tool devoted to fixing the problem.
Here is what I did in Photoshop Elements:
1. I selected the Red Eye Brush tool from the toolbar and chose an appropriate-size brush.
2. By placing the brush and clicking on the red area of the eye, I automatically specified that color for removal. I then dragged over the eye until the red was replaced with black. No more red eye!
A.k.a.: The equivalent feature is called Remove Red Eye in PhotoDeluxe, Red-eye Removal in PhotoStudio, Fix Red Eye in Picture It and Remove Red Eye in PhotoSuite.