Editing Digital photography the easy way

In order to edit pictures successfully, one must have the proper tools, just as when processing photos in a darkroom. In the latter, chemicals, exposure times, and certain materials can affect the outcome of a photograph. In today's darkrooms, photo editing programs, one must know how to use the tools at hand to create the results wanted. Using photo editing programs makes editing much easier. It is far less expensive than working in a traditional darkroom and far less time-consuming if you wish it to be. However, you may also take your time editing to come out with the best results. Mistakes are not embedded in stone, for there's always the "undo" button to rely on. Using your software, you can improve an image, or change it to something completely different.

When you upload your pictures from your digital camera to your computer, most of them will probably be a little blurry. Probably it won't be enough to make you want to change it, but if it's not, there's always the UnSharp Mask that you can use to sharpen the image. Most cameras don't apply any kind of sharpening filter to pictures they take, and so they won't always look as crisp as you might want. Most likely if you have a basic editing program you will be able to sharpen your pictures successfully, and you can sharpen them as much or as little as you want. What's the "right" size for a picture? Well, that depends on the photo. Most monitors display at 72 dpi (dots per inch). So, if you want the picture to be 5 inches wide (probably about the biggest you would want for an e-mail message), the picture would be 360 pixels wide (5 inches x 72 dpi = 360 pixels). Pixel is short for "Picture Element" and is the smallest unit of visual information used to build an image. If you have ever zoomed in on an image, Pixels are those little squares that you see. The more pixels in an image, the better the resolution.

Sometimes, clear lines that separate the images in the panorama may appear. It is possible to blend the lines so that they disappear. Select the Advance Blending option located at the right of the Photomerge window, then select Preview. Inconsistencies in color will be calculated by the program. At this point, the images will blend together. Photoshop will combine all the individual images for your panoramic into a single layer. If you select the Keep as Layers option it is easier to edit each image individually. This is a great help if one of the images is brighter or darker then the other images. You can select that image in layers and adjust the brightness for just that image. It is a good idea to save the layers as a .psd file so that you can always come back and correct any mistakes or make any changes later. It's a real pain to have to redo everything from scratch just if you made a mistake or want to change something later. You can also distort the pictures so that the scene will look like it is in perspective. Choose the Perspective option on the bottom of Settings. You can also do this by choosing Set Vanishing Point in the Photomerge window, then click to an area in the panorama.

Look sharp. Be sharp. But keep your hands off the "sharpening" menu. You'll notice that I did not tell you to sharpen the image in the list of things to do above. Why? Because that's how most pictures get ruined. Sharpening can't be undone. Sharpening should be the very last thing you do to an image before you print it or place it in an on-screen album. Do NOT sharpen an image before saving it. If you decide you want to return to the picture later to edit it some more, you'll be in a pickle. Do all your sharpening on temporary copies that you are planning to print or send to the Web. Don't be judge and jury. If you're not sure whether one of your images looks better or worse after editing, ask someone else to take a look. Show side-by-side versions, before and after your editing. Don't start a family argument if your spouse (or, worse yet, your 9-year-old) says you have no talent. Be honest about what others see.

Why bother with old equipment that does not have full functionality? The optical performance of older professional quality lenses is still very good, and this is not always reflected in their price on the second-hand market. Maybe you have a favorite lens that has that special quality and you want to keep using it. The sensors of most DSLRs are smaller than the size of 35mm film, so digital cameras use only part of the view through the lens. This can help older lenses in their performance as lens faults are more prevalent at the edge of their view area. Using more of the center section avoids these problem areas, so the old lens may perform better on the digital than they ever did before. Recognizing the value of the screw-mount lenses even in the digital age, there are still new and second-hand adaptors available to mount these lenses on a variety of digital SLR cameras. While the lens may mount on the camera, the adaptors generally do not provide any mechanical or electrical connection between the lens and the digital camera body.

Sharpening is one of the most impressive transformations you can apply to an image since it seems to bring out image detail that was not there before. What it actually does, however, is to emphasize edges in the image and make them easier for the eye to pick out - while the visual effect is to make the image seem sharper, no new details are actually created. The first step in sharpening an image is to blur it slightly. Next, the original image and the blurred version are compared one pixel at a time. If a pixel is brighter than the blurred version it is lightened further; if a pixel is darker than the blurred version, it is darkened. The result is to increase the contrast between each pixel and its neighbors. The nature of the sharpening is influenced by the blurring radius used and the extent to which the differences between each pixel and its neighbor are exaggerated.

One of the most recognized and utilized programs for photo editing is Adobe's Photoshop. From this software the term "shopped" was phrased. People who work with and view photography use the term to refer to photographs which appear to have been manipulated to show something that was not in the original photograph, to remove something which was, or when the appearance of a person or object in the photo seems to have been altered. For example, you find a picture of a group of famous (or infamous) people, then you replace the face of one of them with your own for laughs, you have "shopped" the photo. Other programs are Corel Paint Shop Pro, and Serif Photo Plus, to name but a few.

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