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Another Free Photo Editing Program, Plus More Photo Editing Tips
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006
4:51:00 PM EDT
Hearing The Shamen, Boss Dub
When he's not busy helping to launch new sports blogging networks, blogger Jamie (over at Mr. Irrelevant) passed along a tip on another free photo editing program you can try.
It's for Windows users; it does most of your basic photo editing things (cropping, resizing, color correction, redeye reduction, etc.), and of course, it's free (requires a valid e-mail address to activate): PhotoPlus 6
I just downloaded and installed it (19 MB) -- it seems pretty robust. (Did I say it's free?) I will have to play with it some more, but you can try it out and add it to the roster of other free photo editing programs that I've blogged about: Irfanview and Paint.net and GIMP.
Also, I wanted to show you some of the things I do when I have to edit a photo for my blog or the Journals main page.
Now, I just do very basic photo treatments, and try to keep a very light touch. I'm not a photojournalist, but I still don't want to alter reality -- just make sure that it's accurately reflected on-screen.
For example, outside of straight cropping and resizing, if a photo is overexposed or underexposed, or is clearly color-shifted, I can adjust it so the elements of the photo show up more clearly.
However, at some point, you have to make a judgement call: Did lightening the photo change your hair color? Is this person naturally that ruddy, or did the flash make them look more red? Which is why you can't go too crazy with messing with photos -- it opens too many questions.
Here's an example, using myself. This is the original photo --actually, since the original photo straight off my camera was 1600x1200 (which is pretty huge), I cropped it down to a basic, square headshot, and resized it down to 200x200:
Since I use Photoshop, I can use the great Shadow/Highlight adjustment tool, which is a one-step tool to lighten dark areas and darken light areas. If you don't have Photoshop, you can adjust Levels, as well as Brightness/Contrast, to get similar effects. (I also tweaked the contrast a bit):
I made an animated gif to show the differences between the three photos:
If you don't have Photoshop or a similar photo editing tool, there are still options: a News.com item today talks about digital cameras that can retouch photos for you -- they can make you look thinner by stretching out the photo, or hide wrinkles and blemishes with soft focus, or make colors in landscapes pop more (see the article's gallery -- it's very instructive).
But let's say I wanted to push the limits of what I could do to retouch my photo. I'm not particularly skilled, but after a variety of adjustment layers, airbrushing and prodigious use of the clone tool, here's what I came up with:
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4:51:00 PM EDT
Hearing The Shamen, Boss Dub
Another Free Photo Editing Program, Plus More Photo Editing Tips
It's for Windows users; it does most of your basic photo editing things (cropping, resizing, color correction, redeye reduction, etc.), and of course, it's free (requires a valid e-mail address to activate): PhotoPlus 6
I just downloaded and installed it (19 MB) -- it seems pretty robust. (Did I say it's free?) I will have to play with it some more, but you can try it out and add it to the roster of other free photo editing programs that I've blogged about: Irfanview and Paint.net and GIMP.
Also, I wanted to show you some of the things I do when I have to edit a photo for my blog or the Journals main page.
Now, I just do very basic photo treatments, and try to keep a very light touch. I'm not a photojournalist, but I still don't want to alter reality -- just make sure that it's accurately reflected on-screen.
For example, outside of straight cropping and resizing, if a photo is overexposed or underexposed, or is clearly color-shifted, I can adjust it so the elements of the photo show up more clearly.
However, at some point, you have to make a judgement call: Did lightening the photo change your hair color? Is this person naturally that ruddy, or did the flash make them look more red? Which is why you can't go too crazy with messing with photos -- it opens too many questions.
Here's an example, using myself. This is the original photo --actually, since the original photo straight off my camera was 1600x1200 (which is pretty huge), I cropped it down to a basic, square headshot, and resized it down to 200x200:
Since I use Photoshop, I can use the great Shadow/Highlight adjustment tool, which is a one-step tool to lighten dark areas and darken light areas. If you don't have Photoshop, you can adjust Levels, as well as Brightness/Contrast, to get similar effects. (I also tweaked the contrast a bit):
I made an animated gif to show the differences between the three photos:
* Using the airbrush to take some of the shine off my forehead.And I'm not even a professional photo retoucher -- those people can go absolutely nuts -- check out this portfolio of what a professional can do (roll over the pictures with your mouse to compare the befores and afters).
* Using the clone tool to get rid of some stray hairs.
* Making the whites of my eyes whiter.
* Reducing the bags under my eyes.
If you don't have Photoshop or a similar photo editing tool, there are still options: a News.com item today talks about digital cameras that can retouch photos for you -- they can make you look thinner by stretching out the photo, or hide wrinkles and blemishes with soft focus, or make colors in landscapes pop more (see the article's gallery -- it's very instructive).
But let's say I wanted to push the limits of what I could do to retouch my photo. I'm not particularly skilled, but after a variety of adjustment layers, airbrushing and prodigious use of the clone tool, here's what I came up with:
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This entry has 7 comments: (Add your own)
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Joe catching up with journal reading. Very interesting entry :). I just purchased Photo Shop....any tips are appreciated.
Before My Before Images of Dover's Covered Bridge, Before Cloning
After Covered Bridges Project
Betty -
Thanks Joe. I figured it was something like that.
It was just a little odd to see the word "beta" up there in the URL. It got me thinking "oh great! Now what have I done?"
What I do when I'm mucking around with that stuff is post in my beta test journal and just copy and paste the whole load into my regular journal. But, that's just me, and I tend to do things the difficult way. Then again, I can edit spacing and layout and get everything all shiny before putting it out there for the world to see.
-Dan
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/ -
Dan -- I posted this entry from the beta (so I could do the tagging), so the alert pointed to the beta version of this Journal. When I post from my production Journal, the Alert points to production. It'll do the same for your Journals, too.
Thanks -- Joe
8/30/06 9:54 AM
Great tips. I've been known to help out some self portraits.
Rhianna
http://journals.aol.com/rusrh