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Image Post
Processing: Making A Good Photo Better
In the days before digital cameras and the Internet, airbrushes and special
developing techniques were used to improve photos for publication. These
days, we use personal computers and image editors to easily adjust images to
improve their quality. Thanks to this technology, powerful photo editing
tools are now available for professionals and home users alike. Adjustments
to color balance, exposure, and sharpness can improve the quality of your
photos greatly.
Most images ‘out of the camera’ can benefit from some degree of post
processing, and most DSLR cameras perform minimal in-camera processing,
allowing greater latitude for post processing by the photographer.
This is especially true of RAW files - a type of file format that contains
the raw image data right off the camera's sensor. RAW files are
generally used most by advanced photographers, however, most of the usual
processing techniques are similar for all image file types, including the
JPEG image, which is most popular.
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Resizing an image is
important if you're going to email or post it to a
message board. 640 or 800 pixels wide is
standard for those purposes. |
Converting a color
image to black and white is easy - just use the
saturation control. |
Fortunately, there are many excellent image editors available on
the internet for free. These programs can help you edit and organize your
important photos. It is important to organize your images as originals and
edits. You’ll always want to keep a ‘digital negative’ of your original
image archived. Edited images can be used for prints, sending to friends, or
posting on the forums and online galleries.
Although advanced editing techniques are beyond the scope of this article,
basic editing takes only minutes, and can improve your photos dramatically.
While most professionals use
Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro for editing,
retouching, and color correction, there are many powerful editing programs
that are very affordable, and some are even free. Three free image editors
worth noting are Picasa,
The Gimp, and
Irfanview. All three offer an amazing
array of editing and organizing options, and in the case of The Gimp –
professional level tools with support for image layers.
Basic image
editing will include the following:
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Adjusting brightness and contrast
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Adjusting color hues and saturation
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Cropping an image
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Using a clone tool to remove unwanted objects in an image
that may be distracting
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Resizing for posting on a website or email
Editing For The Internet: Compressing And Resizing Images
There are two basic ways to reduce the size of an image – changing the image
file format and changing its dimensions. The term ‘resizing’ is often used
to describe these processes.
Almost all digital cameras (and scanners) will output an image file in JPEG
format by default, which is a compressed file type. Unlike a bitmap or TIFF
file, JPEG allows varying degrees of file compression, at the penalty of
image quality. This is important to reduce the image size for quick
downloading through websites or sending in email. Nobody
wants to download a three-megabyte, ten-megapixel image
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Reducing an image's
disk size is easy and allows for emailing and
posting on the internet. Simply choose the
"Save As..." option and you can select the amount of
JPEG compression. More compression results in
smaller file sizes, but at reduced image quality.
Remember to keep your original image unedited as a
backup. |
All image editors will allow a “Save As…” function with
options for JPEG compression. Using more compression will reduce the disk
space an image uses, while reducing the image dimensions will reduce its
virtual size. For emailing or posting on most message forums (including
Scream And Fly), images should be in JPEG format, compressed to yield an output file of no
greater than 100KB in size. You’ll also have to resize the image’s
dimensions to 800 pixels wide or less. Remember to keep the original, high
quality file archived, in case you wish to print from it later.
The original file from the camera is your 'digital negative' and
should always be safely stored.
Remember to practice and experiment and post those images!
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