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Comments and thoughts?
I'm not a pro photographer. I'm also not a prolific photographer.
Many people learn best by experience. I'm sure some of you
out there have some tips on how to improve your photography.
I'd also like this piece to be an evolving piece, becoming
better at helping as time goes on.
With that in mind, if you know some tips that could help
beginning photographers make their shots better, either on
the shooting side or the digital editing side, or if you just
have some comments about some of the ideas I posted here,
I would appreciate some e-mail. You can send them to me at
jnishi@i360.com, and
I may post your hints with a future update.
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(Again, I write this with the caveat that I am not a
professional photographer or digital touch-up artist. What
I do, I do mainly from reading and practice. It is recommended
that if you are seriously interested in going into digital
touchup or photography as a profession that you seek the advice
of a professional. Oh, and of course, the tips I show all
apply to digital touchup. If your work is with film, you’ll
either need to scan it into a computer, or otherwise consult
a professional about fixing film images.
Photoshop name, as well as icons and commands used in
the article are properties of Adobe Systems, Inc., and are
used without permission.)
Well, you’ve taken the shot. Hopefully, the shot will
have come out well enough out of the camera that you can use
it right away or be very happy with how it came out.
However, more than likely, there will still be some elements
you will want to fix in your final image. Perhaps the brightness
is too high in your image, causing the blacks to wash out
and the whites to be too strong. Maybe the color in your image
didn’t come out quite right. Perhaps you need to crop
out some elements of your image, perhaps to fit the correct
size ratio for printing (most digital camera shoot 3:4 or
4:3, depending on your perspective, while an 8x10 image is
obviously 5:4, and a 4x6 is obviously 2:3).
In any case, if you need to make fixes, you can do them digitally,
using software available on the market. More than likely,
your digital camera (if you are using one) came with a suite
of tools to handle at least the most basic tasks (color adjustment,
brightness/contrast, red-eye reduction, cropping). However,
if you are planning to do some more serious editing, you will
want to get your hands on a real software suite, such as Photoshop,
The GIMP, or Paint Shop Pro. Of the three, Photoshop tends
to be the most powerful to use and is the most standard, Paint
Shop Pro tends to be the easiest and reasonably priced, and
The GIMP tends to also be powerful, but a bit cumbersome.
However, the price (free) can’t be beat, and makes it
the best substitute if you can’t afford Photoshop. For
this column, however, I’ll be stating instructions specifically
for Adobe Photoshop 7 for Windows (which is what I use). However,
the instructions should easily be adaptable to the Mac version,
and most programs have at least some of the methods I’ll
discuss, albeit perhaps with different names and use. Unfortunately,
I cannot simplify the vocabulary, so be sure to be familiar
with at least some of the names for the Photoshop menus and
palettes and objects.
I will be approaching the fixes you can make in order of
how far the image is altered from the original image and intent.
If you are an absolute purist who cannot stand images being
altered, you won’t want to read very far, if anywhere
at all. On the other hand, if you don’t really mind
altering your images, and you want them to look as good as
you can possibly make them, read further on. It should also
go without saying that since many of these procedures require
some sort of alteration to the image that it’s best
to make sure you always keep backups of the original, and
save after every successful procedure, and if possible, keep
each important checkpoint within a new layer (remember that
you can use layers to do work, including adjustment layers
to actually handle the phases that deal with color and brightness
correction).
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 Example
1: Basic color, brightness, and contrast correction. This
Gundam image originally had a bit of a nasty blue/purple color
cast over the image. I've adjusted the image by applying a
bit of color correction away from blue and purple. The image
still has a bit of the cast, but it's a lot better than from
before. I could have fooled around with the image cast further,
but it looked okay at this point.
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[ color, brightness, and contrast correction
]
The first step in fixing your images for use digitally is
to deal with any problems with color or brightness/contrast
that your image has. Since these are flaws introduced in the
camera or scanning processes, and do not accurately reflect
the original image as intended, this is a fairly minor but
powerful and necessary correction.
First of all, if you are using Photoshop 7, start with both
the Image -> Adjust -> Auto Color command and the Image
-> Adjust -> Auto Levels command (if you are using a version
of Photoshop earlier than 7, you’ll only have the Auto
Levels command at your disposal). Of course, if either of
those commands adds a wrong hue to the image, you can always
Edit -> Undo the last step, or go back in the history
in Photoshop.
From there, if your picture needs further color correction,
you can use one of several methods for adjusting. The easiest
by far for Photoshop users for adjusting color is the Image
-> Adjust -> Variations dialog. Using this dialog, users
get a preview of what the image would look like using any
one of 6 color corrections (CGYRMB) at varying strengths,
and can pick using the thumbnails. If you are a bit stronger
in color adjustment skills, you can use the Image -> Adjust
-> Color Balance tool to do a linear color correction,
or the Image -> Adjust -> Levels or Image -> Adjust
-> Curves on the various color channels to do a more powerful
color correction. The color balance tool is still a relatively
easy tool for doing color correction with some fine control,
while doing it individually in levels or curves is a bit of
an advanced task best avoided if you aren’t used to
the tools.
A hint for color correction: if you can’t quite tell
if your image has a color cast, then take a close look at
areas that should be white and black. White areas especially
reveal color casts (you can use the eyedropper to find out
if there is a cast). However, most of the time, if you can’t
tell that there’s a color cast, then you’ve probably
come relatively close to the right color.
For making further adjustments to brightness and contrast,
it’s best to stay away from the Image -> Adjust ->
Brightness/Contrast tool, and instead, go straight to
the Image -> Adjust -> Levels and Image -> Adjust
-> Curves tools. In this case, the levels are easier to
use, but the curves again offer more power if you know how
to use them. If you are dealing with brightness and contrast
in levels, note that the middle triangle deals with the gamma,
and will adjust brightness. The left and right triangles (black
and white) deal with white points and black points, and will
help improve contrast by setting the clipping points for black
and white. Dragging the black and white triangles closer to
center increase contrast. Moving the gray triangle left increases
brightness, while moving it right decreases brightness. For
curves, adding a point to transform the curve adjusts the
brightness (adding multiple points allows more control to
what colors are brightened/darkened) while adjusting the two
end points adjusts the contrast (white and black points).
A caveat: be cautious in increasing contrast, as good looking
pictures do still have some contrast in them, and making the
contrast too high can lead to really odd looking images.
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