Whether you have been taking photos for decades or days, chances are good that you have caught onto the creativity bug. Taking photos can be even more exciting when you edit your photos in a process that professionals refer to as simply “post.” Photoshop (an Adobe product) is the “post” industry-standard software.
While you can download inexpensive or free software to help you crop and recolor your photos, Photoshop allows users to manipulate photos pixel-by-pixel. Here are some fun Photoshop editing tips to use before you upload your shots to your photo sharing site.
Artistic Palette
With your photo open in Photoshop, click on “Filter” from the header menu and scroll down to “Artistic.” Under the “Artistic” submenu, you will see a variety of options that will significantly alter the look of your photo. You will want to select the right option that satisfies your end goal. (It may take awhile to play around until you find this option, so get familiar with what's available to you.)
For example, if you would like to turn your image into a graphic that resembles a watercolor painting, simply click on the “watercolor option.” A window will pop open that will provide you with a variety of options for manipulating your watercolor-photo art. You'll be able to adjust the brush detail, shadow intensity, and texture to create the perfect watercolor image.
If you would like to share your watercolor photo in your home or office, simply print the image onto texturized paper, sign the photo, and display it in a nice frame. Chances are good that only the carefully observer will recognize that your artwork began as a photo!
Note: there are multiple options under the Filter menu, such as Sketch, Pixelate, Colored Pencil, and Charcoal. Select the filter that best matches your artistic vision for your photo sharing project. If you select a filter that you're not happy with, simply undue the filter using the history tool and try another. After all, trying multiple looks on the same photo is part of the fun of using Photoshop!
Get Funky with Your Colors
Photoshop lovers have the opportunity to easily manipulate the colors of their photos. Seasoned photographers will often turn to Photoshop to smooth wrinkly skin in a portrait, brighten a sky in a landscape, or turn a color photo into a black and white masterpiece. If you're looking to punch up your favorite snapshots before loading them onto your photo sharing site, head over to the Image menu in Photoshop.
The Image menu provides a variety of options to address the overall color of a photo. (Of course, if you would like to change color in just one area of the photo, Photoshop has tools to help you do that as well.) Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the Image menu before you take your next photo editing step.
The Mode option basically determines what kind of information is in the pixels of the image. If you open your image from its original location on your computer, it will probably be in CMYK, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. CMYK is the mode that printers use when printing a photograph. Therefore, if you intend to share your photos by printing them, make sure the mode is on CMYK.
RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, which is the mode that is used by computer monitors and televisions. Inside each dot on a computer monitor or TV screen are three miniature light bulbs; one is red, one is green, and one is blue. Therefore, if you intend to upload your photos to a photosharing Web site, make sure you have selected the RGB mode.
The grayscale mode is a no-brainer; it turns your photos into varying shades of grey and is appropriate for printed photos and photo sharing online.
After selecting the appropriate mode, scroll down the Image menu to the Adjustments submenu. The Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color levels are built-in devices that will automatically adjust the colors of your image using sophisticated color matching tools.
If you prefer to adjust your colors on your own, play around with the Color Balance, Curves, Hue/Saturation, and Brightness/Contrast tools for the best results. The simplest way to understand how these tools work is to simply open them and play around. As always, if you make an adjustment that you would like to change, simply undo your adjustment from the History menu.
Make Cropping Your Friend
Photoshop is not the only software that will help you crop your photos, but it also provides you with advanced editing options. Most digital cameras take photos that are between 5 and 10 megabytes each. That means that there is a lot of color information stored in each one of those pixels.
Because there is so much color information stored in your photo, you can usually enlarge the photo to extremely high dimensions without losing image quality. It also means that you can zoom in on a photo to enlarge a small selection of the photo and discard information around it. More to the point, this means that you don't have to compose a brilliant original photo in order to create a optical opus.
Back in the days before computer manipulation, photographers had to be very careful about the images that they captured in between the bounds of a photograph. Now, thanks to digital photography and helpful software, photographers can trim out unwanted objects and enlarge other objects in order to create a photo sharing masterpiece to be proud of.
For example, let's say you're on a hiking trip in the American West and stumble upon a family of Prairie Dogs. Everyone knows that Prairie Dogs are adorable animals that pop above ground for seconds at a time before scurrying into their underground caves. In the old days of photography, a photographer would be lucky to have time to set up a shot and capture a Prairie Dog before it ran out of the frame.
Now, however, any amateur photographer can simply point and click without even having to worry if the animal is in the center of the frame. Once the image is downloaded onto the computer and opened in Photoshop, simply crop and enlarge the photo to feature the Prairie Dog. You'll amaze your friends with your photography skills…and may even get a coffee table book deal someday!
Remember: Photoshop is a very large and complicated piece of software. These tips are designed to get you started, but if you would like to be a true Photoshop master, head to the bookstore for a step-by-step guide to perfecting your photos. As in all creative things, your original shot only has to be a draft of your final product.
