Tabla de contenidos para Photo Editing 1st Edition en Photo Editing

We’ll begin this guide with a look at the basic equipment and software you need for editing and printing digital images, focusing on still pictures (not movie clips, which have different requirements). The tools you need will vary, depending on what you want to do with your photos: • Are you aiming to make large, high-quality prints for framing or display? • Do you simply want to correct minor flaws to improve the way your photos look on social media? • Are you interested in special effects? Once these decisions are made, you’ll need a computer, monitor, pointing device, and one or more output devices. You’ll also need editing software that is appropriate to the hardware you’re using and the ways you plan to output your images for viewing and…

Resizing and cropping are two of the most basic image editing functions. Both require careful consideration as they can affect image quality. Resizing changes the dimensions of the image, which usually affects the file size (and, thereby, image quality). Cropping always involves cutting away part of the original image and results in some of the pixels being discarded. Resizing There are plenty of reasons to resize images, the most common being reducing the size of large files to make them easier to email or share online. Many cameras can do this in-camera but it’s easy to accomplish with basic image editors and there are plenty to be found via a web search. Before you use them on your own photos it’s important to understand what is involved because resizing requires…

Advanced digital cameras usually provide two colour space options: sRGB and Adobe RGB. Each has a pre-determined way of organising colours to ensure they are reproduced in the same way on different output devices, whether these be computer or portable device screens or in hard-copy prints. The sRGB is the ‘universal’ colour space used by all devices. While it only encompasses about 35% of all visible colours, it is broad enough for most applications and is the standard colour space for displaying images on the internet. Adobe RGB encompasses roughly 50% of all visible colours and provides better reproduction of cyan-greens than sRGB. It can reproduce most of the colours achievable on digital printers, including inkjets and photolab printers. Most hobbyist photographers will find sRGB ‘good enough’ for their requirements,…

Brightness and contrast adjustments are among the most common functions performed on digital images. Because of this – and because photographers expect to be able to fine-tune these adjustments – most editors provide several ways of making these adjustments The simplest tool is a basic pair of Brightness/Contrast sliders. This is quite a crude tool because the adjustments act equally across all tones in the image. There is an ever-present risk of blowingout highlights while you attempt to bring up details in shadowed areas. Most editors include an Auto Contrast adjustment, which identifies the brightest and darkest tones in the image and attempts to spread the intermediate tones evenly across this range. The end result will be largely dictated by the spread of tones in the original image. It works…

While some subjects look best in full, glorious colour, others can work better when rendered into black and white. Even though dedicated monochrome cameras exist, it’s easy to convert a colour image into monochrome and the end result can be as satisfying. Better still, you also have a colour original to return to. Cameras that allow you to capture raw and JPEG images simultaneously with the black and white mode enabled, provide the best of both worlds: a quick monochrome shot and a colour raw file that can be converted later and will act as your archive file. More information on working with raw files is provided in Chapter 9. Greyscale conversion The simplest way to turn colour originals into B&W is via Greyscale conversion. This is the process used…

Many of today’s cameras come with built-in filter effects that can be applied to shots as you take them. They are only applied to JPEGs because raw files are, by definition, created without adjustments. However, most (if not all) filter effects can be applied once images are in an editable format (JPEG or TIFF) and there’s plenty of software to help you. Why use filters? Most reasons for using filters fall into two categories: useful filters and effects filters. Useful filters include sharpening, blurring, noise suppression, rendering for lighting effects and lens correction. Typical effects filters include those that add mosaic or ripple patterns, simulate oil paintings, crayon drawings or pencil lines, introduce colour effects that boost or subdue colours or change colour balances. Other common filters include linear effects…

Adjustment layers are among the most useful editing functions, partly because they enable you to edit non-destructively but also because you can use the Layers function to select part of an image and work on it without affecting the remainder of the image. The best way to visualise layers is as transparent overlays upon which specific effects are applied. Creating layers When you open an image file it becomes the Background layer. To open a new adjustment layer, select Layer from the top menu bar and click on either Layer or New Adjustment Layer in the dropdown menu. New Adjustment Layer is used when you know precisely which action you will carry out. It saves time by opening the appropriate dialog box for the action selected. Clicking on Layer means…

Retouching tools are provided in all editing software, although entry-level applications may provide few of them and offer limited scope for adjusting them. Most applications apply adjustments with ‘brushes’ that can be adjusted with sliders, usually in a pop-up dialog box that resembles the screen grab shown on the opposite page. Brushes can also be set via a dropdown menu in either the menu bar or the toolbox. The Fade slider, which we mentioned in Chapter 2, is usually found in the Edit dropdown menu. This slider can be used to reduce the impact of most editing adjustments, letting you pull back on brightness, contrast and colour adjustments when you think you have gone slightly over-the-top. It comes in handy for controlling the Auto adjustments for tone, contrast or colour…