Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Picture-Editing Tricks

Picture-Editing Tricks

The great thing about digital photography is that you have much more power over the photograph during post-production than you would in a darkroom. There are many tricks to post-production editing, and all require the use of a photo-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Paintshop Pro Photo. There is, however, a trick to photo editing that happens before post-production--that is the shooting format. Photos that are shot in RAW (tiff) format are can be edited much more easily than jpeg images.

Levels

    All DSLRs (digital single lens reflex cameras) come equipped with level meters. The levels in a digital photograph refer to the white versus black output. When one side is exaggerated and the other severely understated, chances are the photo is either overexposed or underexposed. You can attempt to fix the levels in post-production by increasing the black output level in a washed-out photo and increasing the white output in a dark image. Just remember that adjusting the levels severely (a lot in either direction) increases the noise (grain) in a photograph.

Photo Filters

    Adding a photo filter is the best way to correct an improper white balance. Photos whose white spaces look blue can be corrected with a warming filter of yellows and oranges, while photos whose whites look unnaturally yellow or gold can be corrected with cooling filters in blue shades.

Cropping

    Cropping is one of the simplest yet most effective photo-editing tools. Cropping an ill-composed photograph can be the difference between a work of art and a snapshot. Composition is as crucial to a photograph as lighting technique is. Photographs that are shot in large formats (RAW is best) can be cropped to bring attention to one subject in a photo filled with many, zoom into a particular area, and decentralize a subject. One trick to subject photography to keep in mind is the rule of thirds; never center your subject (unless that in itself is the goal), but rather keep it just slightly off to the side, top or bottom of the center. Imagine the photographic plane covered in a 3 X 3 grid; well-composed photographs generally tend to have the main subject at one of the four line intersections. You can achieve this through cropping.

Saturation

    Color saturation does exactly what the name implies, it saturates or increases each color. The same effect would be visible in a painting: the more paint applied to a surface (such as a wall or ceramic vase), the more vibrant and saturated the color becomes. Color saturation can usually be applied to the entire photograph or adjusted individually using a color-balance application. Increasing the saturation will bring a dull photograph that was underexposed or shot with improper white balance (when the white space looks either blue or yellow) truer to its natural hue.

Black-and-White

    In the case of a great subject (what is in the photo) but terrible technique (bad lighting, off colors), converting the photo into black-and-white, or grayscale, can save the photograph by disguising its inadequacies. Black-and-white is generally considered a dramatic effect, but it is also a correcting effect incognito. When altering a photo to black-and-white, you can either change the file format from RGB color (red, green, blue color) directly to grayscale, add a black-and-white photo filter over the original photograph or alter the image using a channel mixer. The colors in a digital photograph are divided into channels; if you use a channel mixer to change the photo to black-and-white, you can adjust each color to alter the photo to a crisp, proper balance of black, white and grays.


Picture-Editing Tricks

The great thing about digital photography is that you have much more power over the photograph during post-production than you would in a darkroom. There are many tricks to post-production editing, and all require the use of a photo-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Paintshop Pro Photo. There is, however, a trick to photo editing that happens before post-production--that is the shooting format. Photos that are shot in RAW (tiff) format are can be edited much more easily than jpeg images.

Levels

    All DSLRs (digital single lens reflex cameras) come equipped with level meters. The levels in a digital photograph refer to the white versus black output. When one side is exaggerated and the other severely understated, chances are the photo is either overexposed or underexposed. You can attempt to fix the levels in post-production by increasing the black output level in a washed-out photo and increasing the white output in a dark image. Just remember that adjusting the levels severely (a lot in either direction) increases the noise (grain) in a photograph.

Photo Filters

    Adding a photo filter is the best way to correct an improper white balance. Photos whose white spaces look blue can be corrected with a warming filter of yellows and oranges, while photos whose whites look unnaturally yellow or gold can be corrected with cooling filters in blue shades.

Cropping

    Cropping is one of the simplest yet most effective photo-editing tools. Cropping an ill-composed photograph can be the difference between a work of art and a snapshot. Composition is as crucial to a photograph as lighting technique is. Photographs that are shot in large formats (RAW is best) can be cropped to bring attention to one subject in a photo filled with many, zoom into a particular area, and decentralize a subject. One trick to subject photography to keep in mind is the rule of thirds; never center your subject (unless that in itself is the goal), but rather keep it just slightly off to the side, top or bottom of the center. Imagine the photographic plane covered in a 3 X 3 grid; well-composed photographs generally tend to have the main subject at one of the four line intersections. You can achieve this through cropping.

Saturation

    Color saturation does exactly what the name implies, it saturates or increases each color. The same effect would be visible in a painting: the more paint applied to a surface (such as a wall or ceramic vase), the more vibrant and saturated the color becomes. Color saturation can usually be applied to the entire photograph or adjusted individually using a color-balance application. Increasing the saturation will bring a dull photograph that was underexposed or shot with improper white balance (when the white space looks either blue or yellow) truer to its natural hue.

Black-and-White

    In the case of a great subject (what is in the photo) but terrible technique (bad lighting, off colors), converting the photo into black-and-white, or grayscale, can save the photograph by disguising its inadequacies. Black-and-white is generally considered a dramatic effect, but it is also a correcting effect incognito. When altering a photo to black-and-white, you can either change the file format from RGB color (red, green, blue color) directly to grayscale, add a black-and-white photo filter over the original photograph or alter the image using a channel mixer. The colors in a digital photograph are divided into channels; if you use a channel mixer to change the photo to black-and-white, you can adjust each color to alter the photo to a crisp, proper balance of black, white and grays.



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