I’m sure by now you’re itching to start playing around with your photos in your image editing software, and I’m excited to go through some basic ideas with you, to help you improve on your photos. I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop software, but other image editing software will no doubt have similar tools. I’m not going to be technical, and I’m not going to give you lessons on tools – that’s up to you to have fun learning! What I am going to show you in this digital imaging article, is how I use certain tools or features to achieve what I want. On that note, pictures at the ready, let’s get going!
Party Photo – Red Eye Removal
My first photo, taken at an evening party indoors with flash requires red eye removing, so I would first of all zoom in (using either my Navigator panel or Zoom tool) until I am comfortably close enough to work on the eyes. You can also use your Hand Tool to drag to a precise area to work on.
There are one or two ways to remove red eye – my method is the most subtle and I use the Brush tool, then select a brush size just enough to paint over the red area in the pupils. I use the Colour Mode (
Another method you could use is the Ellipse Selection Tool – to select both red areas of the pupils and add a feather of say 1 to take the sharpness off the selection edge. Then using the Hue/Saturation feature under the Image Menu, you could adjust the Desaturation of the colour until the red disappears.
If you have an automatic red eye removal button then see how it fairs?
There is no right or wrong way, but it’s certainly worth experimenting until you are happy with your red eye removal technique!
Tip: Brushes – I mostly use feathered brushes in different sizes (a feathered brush gives a softer or natural touch, than a hard 100 per cent solid brush).
Tip: Using feathered selections will help prevent your selection from looking like a cut-out
Knocking Back the Flashlight
Flash can sometimes give you a white appearance in the face or body, and the picture would look a little better if the flesh areas were a little darker.
I have used both these following methods which work well …
The first method … if you have Image File> Adjustment and a Variations feature – then I would choose Highlights, Fine on the Scale, then click Darker 3 or 4 times and Okay. This should darken the highlighted areas we want to knock back.
Another method, which is equally as good, maybe even a touch better, would be to select around the pale skin areas using the Polygon Lasso Tool (or similar selection tool). Once your selection is made, use a Feather of around 6. What the feather feature does is softens or feathers the edges of the selection for a more natural look. With the feathered selection active, use the Brighten feature and enter a minus figure until you are happy with the result. You will see the highlighted area within your selection now darkening.
Crop to Zoom
Finally, there is a lot of background and darkness which could be removed completely.
When cropping, it’s worth zooming in with your Zoom Tool beforehand – this will give you some good ideas of what the photo could look like after cropping.
Cropping Options: You might have the choice of cropping and resizing your picture at the same time.
Our Party image is approx 6 inches wide x 4 inches high at 300 dpi. We could crop keeping that same resolution and of course the inches would be the only thing that would change.
As the picture is at 300 dpi, we have enough pixel data to be able to re-size our picture to a bit larger size in inches and it should still look good for printing.
I cropped the image to 6 inches wide x 8 inches high at 200 dpi (don’t go below 150dpi otherwise you’re looking at a lower resolution which is okay for Internet viewing only).
Finally, we now have a much improved photo from our original picture – red eyes removed, highlights on body and face adjusted and neat cropping for bringing forward your subject in your photo!
Beneath the Cherry Blossom – Careful Brightening
My next image was taken beneath a cherry blossom tree and in the shade. This picture requires careful brightening of the cherry blossoms, to bring back the detail, but I don’t want to brighten the already-bright sky in the background. If you use the Brighten command, you may well get a very bright overall picture, plus a whitening/greying cast over the whole image – this we don’t want.
Methods which work well …
If you have Image File> Adjustment and a Variations feature – then I would choose Shadows, then Midtones, between Fine and Course on the Scale, then click Lighter a couple of times and Okay. This should remove the shade from the cherry blossoms giving a clear brightened picture.
Another method … if you have Image File>Adjustment and a Levels feature, by moving the middle slider slightly (the Midtones range) toward to darker end of the scale, until the shading becomes lighter, then maybe add a touch of Brightness and Contrast to finalise for a well balanced brightened image.
Another method which does work is choosing the Colour Range, sampling the bright sky area to create a selection on the bits of sky. Then Inverse your active selection, give a feather of around 3, and use Brighten and Contrast until the blossoms come to light.
Swans – Colourising water
My final photo for this article shows 2 swans near the edge of a pond, a bit of a grey day when the photo was taken, and the water looks a little muddy. Here’s what I would do to change of the colour of the water only, to spark up the image…
Using either Colour Range or the Magic Wand Tool (this tool selects tonal areas – in this case the water we want to select only). Also switching value tolerance from between 30 and 10 (the higher the tolerance the more area chosen). Once I made a clean selection of the water only, I applied a feather of 3, to soften the selection and used Image>Adjustments then Hue/Saturation … I moved the Hue slider until I was satisfied with a natural blue colouring.
Alternatively, once you have your feathered selection, instead of using Hue/Saturation, you could choose a deep blue colour, then use your brush on Colour Mode at a low opacity (similar to technique with red eye mentioned earlier). By painting within the selected water area with a large feathered brush you will arrive with a similar effect.
If you want to see all photos relating to this article just click on the link below to take you to my website – then click for the Digital Imaging Articles, then Digital Imaging – Getting Started Retouching your Photos.
I think that’s enough to digest for now and I hope you have gleaned some super digital imaging tips for basic retouching ideas. We’ll next be looking at removing objects and enhancing badly scratched older photos.
See you soon!
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