How To Take Photographs With Your Computer

Chapter 4: Image Sizes and Editing

• Most photo editing software has an option called "Crop" (or perhaps "Trim") which allows you to cut the edges (hopefully just containing the background!) off images.
  
  
• Most photo editing software also has an option called "Scale" or "Resize" which will stretch or shrink the image to a larger or smaller size:
  
  
  • You should try to avoid stretching images, as this can cause lots of distortion. Instead, if you need a larger image, retake your photograph at a higher resolution.
    
    
  • It's okay to shrink images, provided you have good quality photo editing software - but poor quality software can distort images even when shrinking an image.If you do shrink an image, be sure to shrink it by the same proportion in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions so as to preserve its aspect ratio

1. Modifying Brightness and Contrast: You may find that some of your photographs have been taken in too dark or, conversely, too bright, environments. Modifying the brightness and contrast allows you to correct for this. Additionally, unless your lighting conditions were absolutely perfect, modest brightness and/or contrast adjustments may produce improvements in your images.
   
   
2. Modifying Hue and Saturation: Modifying either of these will allow you to alter the color content of your photograph. Adjusting the hue will rebalance the color, whereas adjusting the saturation will modify the strength of the colors.
   
   
3. Adjusting Color Levels: If you photo editing software allows it, you can alter the balance of colors in your photograph.
   
   
4. Removing Red Eye: The "Red-Eye Effect" is the effect where people's eyes look red in photographs because of the reflected light from the photographic flash. Most photo editing software provides an easy-to-use tool to remove red eye from photographs.
   
   
5. Sharpening: If your photograph is blurred (which may be a result of motion-blur or other blur during the photography, or a side-effect of other edits), you can use the sharpening feature in your photo editing software to restore or even bring out fine detail.
   
   
6. Removing or Adding Noise: If your photograph is perhaps taken from a scanned image of an old photograph, it may contain dust, speckles and other noise. Photo editing software can be used to remove this type of noise. Conversely, you can also use photo editing software to add noise to a photograph to give a grainy effect - for example, if you convert a modern picture to black and white, and add noise to it, you can make it look like an old photograph/

• Choosing Photo Editing Software

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