In order to edit pictures successfully, one must have the proper tools, just as when processing photos in a darkroom. In the latter, chemicals, exposure times, and certain materials can affect the outcome of a photograph. In today's darkrooms, photo editing programs, one must know how to use the tools at hand to create the results wanted. Using photo editing programs makes editing much easier. It is far less expensive than working in a traditional darkroom and far less time-consuming if you wish it to be. However, you may also take your time editing to come out with the best results. Mistakes are not embedded in stone, for there's always the "undo" button to rely on. Using your software, you can improve an image, or change it to something completely different. The resolution of your computer's monitor can greatly affect the outcome of your photos. This is the amount of pixels there are on the screen. The more there are, generally, the better the quality of the images. Making sure you have a monitor that is suited for photo editing is an important part of the process. However, you must remember that certain resolutions are meant for certain sized monitors. A large resolution on a small monitor makes everything too small, whereas the opposite makes everything too big. Make sure you know what resolution your monitor is made for.
The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. Some commentators also use this term to indicate a range of input formats that the display's input electronics will accept and often include formats greater than the screen's native grid size even though they have to be down-scaled to match the screen's parameters. An example of pixel shape affecting "resolution" or perceived sharpness is displaying more information in a smaller area using a higher resolution, which makes the image much clearer. However, newer LCD displays and such are fixed at a certain resolution; making the resolution lower on these kinds of screens will greatly decrease sharpness, as an interpolation process is used to "fix" the non-native resolution input into the displays native resolution output.
While it might be neater to store digital images, you aren't done with organizing and storing images. There are various options for data storage, and no one answer is right for everyone. In fact, there may be more than one right answer for you. However you store your images, be sure to file them so they are easy to organize and find. Choose one system and stick to it. Create named folders on your hard drive or name compact discs, for instance, to store them. ALWAYS make copies of your images, leaving the originals intact, before you edit, alter or crop them. The hard drive is where most people store the bulk of their images. This is a good option, but isn't without problems. For instance, if you have all of your images on your hard drive and it crashes, you've lost all your precious images. A horrible thought, of course! Do use the hard drive, but also back up all images right as you transfer them to the hard drive by any secondary method. The compact disc is a wonderful way to store images; it can be rather efficient and it is relatively easy to set up. The downside is you need a CD-burner to use this method. If you do have one, simply keep a running backup of all your images. Be sure to pay special attention to organization so you don't wind up popping ten CDs in just to hunt down one photo. When you burn a new CD of images, write down the dates and descriptions of the photos on the CD. Or name the CDs and keep a notebook that lists what is on each CD. Better yet, make an index print of images on each CD and write the name on top of the print.
With a photo-editing program, you can "fix" or change images acquired from a scanner, digital camera, or the Internet and print them, import them into another document, post them on a Web page and use them for desktop backgrounds. To make the choice that's right for you, check reviews in computer magazines and on the Internet to narrow your choices; look for a program that can directly import images from a scanner or digital camera; make sure the program can crop, resize, flip and rotate images; compare color adjustment capabilities of programs. You should be able to adjust contrast, brightness, sharpness, hues and color-saturation levels; change a color; and convert color to black-and-white or grayscale; and compare the ease of using the various programs available.
Sharpen filters bring out detail in images by increasing the contrast of pixels next to one another. More advanced image editing programs offer several options such as Sharpen, Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges and Unsharp Mask (USM). Unsharp Mask gives you a lot of control over how an image is sharpened. Sometimes a photo will benefit from selective sharpening. You select an area with a programs selection tool and only sharpen the area. The important thing is not sharpen an image too much. The sharpening tool that is most useful for photographs is the Unsharp Mask, now available in most raster programs. The Unsharp Mask searches through your image looking for where colors change, and sharpens those areas. The Unsharp Mask is superior to any other sharpening because it makes decisions based on adjacent pixels, not random color changes, so it usually can find and sharpen just the true edges of color areas.
Often times images are posted on the web and resized with HTML code. This leads to an image full of jagged edges. By resizing your image in an image editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, you can utilize smoothing algorithms that will make an image look much smoother. Additionally, resizing the image will reduce the file size, allowing a web page to load faster than usual. When you resize an image, you are resampling an image. In other words, your program is taking all of the image data and redrawing the pixels so that the image is the desired size. However, when you ask the application to increase the size of the image, the size of each pixel is increased, which inevitably leads to degradation of the image. When you resize an image, you can also change image resolution, to keep the quality of your image.
Cropping is the process of selecting and removing a portion of an image to create focus or strengthen its composition. Even the best photographers will often get back to their computers to view their photos and find that they are not ideal for one reason or another including distracting background elements, framing mistakes, or unbalanced images. While the temptation might be to delete such images the beauty of shooting in the digital format is that editing images after shooting them is relatively quick and easy. Cropping is one option for fixing such problems. This is usually done in photo editing software. Cropping images give you a second chance to frame your images. While you can never really add to the photograph to put more space around your subject (or recover the ear you clipped), cropping the image even tighter can take the focus away from the clipped part of your subject and make the image quite dynamic.
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