eSchool - Digital Photography, September 10th, 2007
Nearly every digital camera on the market comes with some basic image editing software enabling you to perform actions such as color and brightness correction, resizing, sharpening, red-eye removal, and so on. This software is often a component of the basic image transfer utility employed when downloading your pictures to the computer and preparing them for printing.
Adobe Photoshop Elements contains the most commonly used features of Photoshop for a price that's within reach of most photo enthusiasts.
Using Photoshop Elements
The Auto Levels feature stretches the pixels of your photo across the entire available brightness range. This tool, however, provides no ability to set the level of correction. To do that, you can adjust an image's histogram.
Another easy way to correct poorly exposed pictures is with the use of a second layer. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, as well as several other image editors, enable you to create more than one layer in a file. Layers act like transparencies stacked one above the other, allowing portions of layers below them to show through, depending on the settings you select.
Even if you use white balance settings to the best of your ability, you might occasionally have a photo with an overall color cast. You might've forgotten to reset the white balance to Auto after shooting some photos, or the automatic setting failed to result in the proper white balance. Or, perhaps you want to impart a mood to your photo by altering the original color settings. You can perform any of these corrections easily with an image editing program.
For scrapbook enthusiasts, an even more exciting use of image editing software is the ability to insert text onto your photos. For example, you can add a note to a travel photo indicating the location where the photo was taken and the name of a great restaurant nearby. You can also include a greeting on a family photo you want to mail to relatives, or simply record data relevant to each photo for your electronic scrapbook.
Making Your Digital Photography Voice Known
A great source of inspiration and camaraderie with your fellow photo enthusiasts is your local camera club and photo associations. These organizations embrace digital photography wholeheartedly. Visit the Photographic Society of America for information and assistance in locating a camera club.
