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Digital Photos Touch Up Guide

The advances and conveniences in digital photography make it possible for anyone to take a perfect picture, but how exactly is this possible is we all are not the world's greatest photographer? By touching up your raw images through digital editing you can take what was once an average picture and make it a great photograph. Maybe you needed to lighten your image, crop or rotate a bit and even clean up some dirty spots; this is all quick and simple to do once you know how. Most pictures need some type of adjusting to produce the final image. Take a look at this short guide to help you with the most common touch ups for your photos.

Step 1: Start Up Your Image Editor To get started you must first open your chosen image editing program. For those just starting out, try a program such as Ulead Photo Impact. This particular program provides professional level results while still being simple and friendly to use.

Step 2: Remove Red-Eye If you\'re taking photos of people, chances are you may have taken a photo with red-eye problems. This is easily removed with image editing software. In Paint Shop Pro, select the Red-Eye Removal tool in the menu and voila, the program does all the work for you. In Ulead PhotoImpact, there\'s an equivalent tool called Remove Red Eye in the Tool Panel.

Step 3: Rotate and Crop If you want to change the angle of your photograph, you can do this with little loss in quality by using the rotate tool. You may also need to crop your photo to remove cluttered or unnecessary background area that might take focus away from the subject of the photo. Doing this will create a much more professional look.

Step 4: Play with Color Editing software opens a whole world of color options to you. Experiment with color variations for a new and unique look for your image. You can make clouds purple, change your photo to black and white, add a rose hueany effect you might want. A good photo editing program should have an automatic color balance option to adjust color imperfections in your photos.

Step 5: Blurring Effects Sometimes I like to add a blurring effect to my photos. What you can do here is to select areas of the photo which are unimportant and blur them out. This will bring more attention to the main subject of your photo. For example, if I had a picture of a flower and I wanted to play down the details in the leaves in background, I might add a blurring effect to the background.

Step 6: Sharpen Up Sharpening the image is the next step in the photo touch up process. Contrary to popular belief, you can\'t actually sharpen an out of focus image. What I typically do when sharpening an image is to selectively sharpen. That is, I select a part of the image, maybe a person\'s eyes and sharpen only that area. Leave unimportant areas unsharpened.

Step 7: Resize Depending on your needs, you may want to resize your photo. If you\'re emailing a picture to a friend, you\'ll want to resize the picture down to a much smaller size. If you\'re printing the photo on a greeting card, you can scale down the image to the size of a 4x6 print.

Step 8: Save Your Work We're almost finished. Now all you have to do is save your work in the suitable image format. If you want to save all of the details for future editing, save in the TIFF format. If you want to send the picture by e-mail or upload to a web site, choose the JPEG format for saving the image.

Conclusion Alrighty then! Now you know the secret to touching up and preparing your raw digital photos for output. I\'d say that not all the above steps are truly necessary in a given situation. Remember to use your discretion to see which is necessary. Don\'t be afraid to experiment and learn - practice makes perfect when it comes to touching up your photos.