Get into your element with editing digital photographs

By Dan Brown


These days you don't need a special camera to create awesome panoramic photographs. With Photoshop CS using Photomerge makes the process quick and easy. Photomerge in Photoshop CS was created especially for panoramic photography. The process itself is really quite easy but the results of the merge will be depend on the layout and image source quality. The Photomerge feature permits the selection of images intended for automatic panoramic Photomerge and it also allows for manual arrangements. Since your final photo depends on the quality of the source images it is necessary to make note of some tips when shooting scenic photographs. These tips include: Use manual exposure when shooting pictures. Merging the pictures later on will be difficult if different exposures per shot are used. Try to keep the camera as steady as possible when shooting. If you can, use a tripod to steady the camera. Keep a long distance between the camera and the subject, especially when working with landscapes. Chances of parallax are greater when objects are too close to the camera.

Ebay is a commonly used auction program that most of the time uses pictures to sell the items it lists. Pictures are the best sellers, "pictures say a thousand words" as the saying goes. To take some really good pictures for ebay that look proffessional, it isn't that hard, here are few tips: Avoid underexposing your photos, especially if you're shooting against a white background or outside in bright light. Your digital camera should have an over/under expose button that allows you to compensate and adjust the exposure. When taking pictures against a white background you might want to increase the exposure by 1 so that it lets more light into the camera and the background becomes a pure white. Getting close and filling the frame with your subject will produce a better photo, and also help avoid clutter. Buyers like to see the details of what they are buying. The best way to take good close-up photos is to use your cameras macro setting, which is designed to focus at short distances.Your product should be sharp and in focus. Take care to focus correctly. Auto focus on your digital camera may not always produce the best results as it can sometimes be fooled. In these cases use aperture priority mode, and set an aperture of 8 or higher to ensure that your entire photo is sharp. When you increase the aperture your camera compensates with a slower shutter speed, so remember to use a tripod.

There are basic photo editing programs available that allow you to do basic adjustments and learn basic photo manipulation. Some of these programs can be found for free such as Gimp for Windows, Serif's Photo Plus, Paint.NET, Image Forge, Pixia, Ultimate Paint, and several others. Which ever direction you take in choosing a photo editing program, be prepared to become totally hooked on working with digital photography. As you discover the many tricks and tweaks possible with photo editing, don't be surprised to find yourself immersed for hours at a time tweaking and manipulating your photographs.

Use two different windows to display each image.You often need to zoom in for closer looks at pixels. When you make changes to a zoomed-in image, you need to know that it will work effectively when you zoom back out. So, instead of zooming in and out constantly, it is far easier and less time-consuming to have two windows opened containing the same image at different zoom levels. To do this, simply select Window> Arrange> New Window. The same image will appear in a new window. Keep one zoomed at 100% and the other however you need it to work on it. The sphere of PhotoShop CS3 is a large one, but one that can be managed with good habits and some forethought. Enjoy!

Next, take the Saturation slider and slide it to the left until the skin color looks pretty good, or the best that you can get it without looking fake. Don't worry about the other parts of the picture right now. Just concentrate on the skin color. We will fix the background colors next. Once you are satisfied with your skin color, click OK to close out of the Hue/Saturation window, and you will see your new layer above your original picture. If you notice though, the adjustment that you made affected the entire image. To get that back restored to normal, click on the layer mask part of the new layer, and grab your brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and you have a large enough brush so that you are not brushing the background back a long time. Now, using black, brush in the parts of the photo that you want to restore back to normal. I usually brush in the whole picture except the skin areas that I wanted to fix. This gives me the most realistic look. You are now done with the Photoshop tutorial on how to fix skin color in a picture.

Screen test. Check your computer monitor and adjust it if you're not getting a good picture. Most Windows PCs are set up wrong. For a complete guide to adjusting the display, go to http://twcny.rr.com/technofile and type "adjust" (without quotes) in the search field. Edit your images in a sensible order. First, save a copy. Keep that copy safe by moving it to a separate folder. Next, crop the image. Crop the picture, then adjust the levels, also called "curves." Your software might do this automatically. Next, adjust the color and what we loosely call the "tint." Then get rid of noises and blemishes (in the picture, silly, not in your nephew's skin). Finally, save the image TWICE. Put the copy in a different folder, out of the way.

When comparing traditional vs. digital photography one of the arguments may be the ease of use. In utilizing a digital camera it is simply a matter of pointing and shooting. The image is captured by the digital camera and embedded on the memory stick contained within the digital camera. Also, using the easy viewing screen on the camera, the photographer can instantly see whether the picture is what they wanted or if it needs to be taken again. In fact if the picture has movement or does not capture the image that the photographer wants, it is easy to delete the picture from the memory stick.

About the Author:
Did you enjoy this article? Curious about Dominating Photoshop? Well now you can by reading this free Tutorial...what are you waiting for?

Add to: File Insurance Business article Teen Photo Images