Friday, 22 April 2011

Editing Digital Photos With Photoshop

By David Peters


The final image that you see when viewing a digital photo today is most likely not quite the same as the image that was transferred from the camera to the computer it is better. A not-so-perfect picture can be taken to an almost professional level thanks to digital editing and enhancing. One such enhancement commonly used is the helpful sharpness enhancement. Adjusting the sharpness will improve the quality on a fuzzy or blurry picture.

While almost every editor has the sharpness enhancement, not all are top quality. The best ones use internal algorithms to help enhance the photo. The sharpness tool is exceptionally helpful for blurry pictures or one with fuzzy borders and lines.

Today, one of the most commonly used tools is resizing a photograph. What is less heard of is re-sampling. What is the difference? Well resizing is just changing the pixels, while resample is using an actual algorithm to fix the picture so that is appears not blurry, fuzzy, blocked when it is changed. With resizing to enlarge a picture some of the pixels will be doubled.

While with resizing, reducing an image some of the pixels will be thrown out; this why some lines of the photo just disappear. Re-sampling on the contrary, uses algorithms to decide the new size of the pixels, during an enlargement color will be added as a result of interpolation. While reducing an image the actual pixels will be re-calculated. A good image editor will include multiple algorithms for re-sampling and resizing options.

Big question for everyone is how to convert photo files in order to get smaller pictures. This is really helpful if you want to send photo files over the internet. There are two ways to do this: the lossless and the lossy formats. Lossless means that the image stays exactly the same as it was originally. Basically different methods are applied to get a smaller but virtually untouched photo. The most common format that photo software can hand is .png.

Lossy formats will actually lose some information. The advantage to this method is you will be able to chose the size you want it to end up in. The common form it is saved in is a .jpg. This will create small photos that will upload places quite easily. You will have to decide what will work best for you. Do you want a smaller original or do you mind sacrificing some of the photograph in order to make it as small as you want.

Viewing images is just as important as editing them. In order to easily access your images your photo viewer should be able to be customized, easily to use, have photo enhancement tools, printable contact sheets, convenient for attaining pictures, be able manage EXIF data and be able to batch process images. Some good ones are Zoner Photo Stuido which is quite user friendly.

Another good photo viewer is Photophilia which is exceptionally adjustable and able to batch process. Choose a photo viewer that you are comfortable with based on your computer skills. You can opt for a viewer that is quick and simple or go for a more complicated viewer that comes with some more functions. Handy functions to look for are slide show, batch processor, editor functions and zoom factor.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment