Edit/Manipulate Your Photos
This is a more in-depth look at the Photo Edit/Manipulation features that comes with most Digital Photo Editing Software. Now that you have picked your “good photo” (View/Browse article) it is time to edit and manipulate these photos. Such as change the size, orientation-rotate, and remove unwanted items from your photo. Most digital cameras come with their own photo editing software. This is a good place to get used to working with your digital photos because they are usually very simple and easy to use. But in order to make the program easy some great editing tools are not included (Clone Tool, Brush, Magic Wand, etc.). So, after you get handy with this software, it is time to purchase a simple after market photo editing program such as Photoshop Elements 3. This will give you most of the needed tools to edit and manipulate your photos and costs around $100. It is a very popular program so it is easy to find many helpful books on how to use Photoshop Elements 3.
It is advisable to first edit/manipulate your photos before you make any color adjustments and sharpen the photo. As you make color, contrast and sharpening adjustments you can loose some of the information from your photo. Which gives you less information to work with on your photo.
Tools you might use to edit/manipulate your photos:
Clone Tool – this allows you to copy part of your photo and place it on top of something you wish to get rid of like blemishes, wrinkles, scares, distracting items (tree branches, leafs, trash, dead grass, etc.). Be careful not to over do the changes to a persons face or they might not be recognizable and/or not look natural. There is a fine line and you have to judge for yourself.
Brush Tool – this is like a paintbrush, you pick the color, size and type of brush and move it over your photo and it puts down that color. This is good to soften something, reduce a bright spot or fill a blank spot.
Opacity Adjustment - both the Clone and Brush tools can control the amount of spray they put out over the photo. This is called Opacity and ranges from 0% (no spray) to 100% (Full coverage spray). Most of the time 100% is used and covers everything under the spray. When working on faces and sky it is handy to adjust down the Opacity to 25% +/-, which makes for a subtle look. Try the different settings and you will find out how handy this adjustment becomes.
Lasso Tool – this allows you to cut part of your photo out. You can then paste the cut out over another photo (i.e. cut a person out and place them in front of a lake or building).
Layers – You can have layers stacked on each other. This is convenient when you are not sure if you wish a pasted item in a particular location. You can also change which layer is in front or in the back. Some file formats flatten your photo layers after it is saved, Jpeg format is one that will flatten your photo. So if you wish to keep your layers you might save the photo in Tiff or the editing software format (i.e. PSD-Photoshop).
Now your “Good Photo” has been edited it is time to adjust the color, contrast and possibly sharpen the photo (next week’s article). Remember to save in a “Loss-less” format (i.e. Tiff, PSD, PNG, etc.) so you don’t loose any photo information. For more information on the digital photo process go to web link:
www.duanebrovan.com/digitaltips or go to
www.GoShingletown.com and click on the Free Digital Tips Icon.
Duane Brovan is available for digital photo consultations and tutoring: Call (530) 474-4041 Email: Duane@DuaneBrovan.com Visit:
www.duanebrovan.com/digitaltips.
