Enhancing the Photographs

Introduction:
In the previous section, you already learned how to transfer and organize the photos on the computer. This section will focus on brightness, cropping, resizing, removing red-eye, and rotating photographs.

Important Note:
Remember to save a copy of your original photograph because you can’t revert to the original once it has been saved.


Brightness/Contrast:
If the picture is too dark, try using the bundled Quick Fix feature available in most of the editing programs. Also, you can manually adjust the levels, brightness, and contrast in the application. If you don’t like the results you can always undo the changes and continue experimenting.

Cropping:
Sometimes the background is distracting and you might want to have the subject occupying most of the picture, this is why you want to crop your photos.

Resizing:
To shrink high resolution photos you can use the Image Resize feature in all photo editing programs. Sometimes the feature is located in the Share or Export menu.

Rotating:
Some digital cameras will automatically rotate the images that are in a vertical orientation, but some won’t. If your model doesn’t there is a rotate feature included in most of the major applications.

Compression:
It is important to compress your images because you don’t want to send someone a very large file that will take forever to download. Typically bring down the quality to Medium or down to about eighty percent.

Removing Red-eye:
If your digital camera doesn’t have a red-eye reduction feature you can manually remove the red-eye using an editing program. You can use the removal tool, select the eye, and it should be able to remove it perfectly.

Sidenote: If you want a better example, check the tips section for a step-by-step guide.