Editing Digital Photos Isn’t Just For the Pros

Since nearly all photos taken today are digital, it makes sense that there are tons of new editing programs available. And I’m not talking necessarily about AdobeÒ PhotoshopÒ, I am also talking about those basic programs that came on your computer! Did you know that you had them? Well, if you are looking for a program that will give you the most basic photo editing capabilities, look no further than your computer. Editing digital photos doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg after all!

If you want a program for editing your digital photos that will put you on top of the pyramids, or that will airbrush a face, chances are your computers editing software isn’t powerful enough. If you are interested in getting rid of red-eye, perhaps adding some neat effects, or simply changing the color scheme, then editing digital photos on your computer is just a click away!

I am pretty sure almost everyone who uses a camera knows about Adobe Photoshop. We might not all know how to use it, but we have all at least heard of it. Adobe Photoshop takes editing digital photos to an all-new level. Editing digital photos today is seemingly limitless. You can edit faces, edit skin tones, creates backdrops, add and soften makeup, light, contrast, you name it! Editing digital photos today is well, intense. There is a lot to know and, generally speaking, most of us don’t have the time to sit down and learn it all. Most of us work eight hours a day. My idea of a fun evening isn’t sitting in a lecture hall watching some guy on an overhead talk to me about Photoshop, and chances are you would agree, but many of us do want to learn some new ways for editing digital photos we take.

So, here it is, the answer: Video Professor. Video Professor is a great tool to help you learn nearly any program! They have over 60 titles to choose from and they update their programs continuously. Each CD tutorial takes three hours but will take you from being a beginner, to being an advanced user! What more could you ask for? You can work from home, and learn at your own pace. So, you come home late one night and don’t want to study, then don’t. You have some free time, sit down and learn a little! Over 8 million people have used Video Professor and loved it, so really, if you want to start editing digital photos on a new level, you should take a look at Video Professor’s tutorial, Learn Photoshop.

I realized that editing digital photos with Adobe Photoshop made my pictures look better than with my computer’s editing program and I was able to use more interesting effects and ultimately, come up with the perfect picture.

So what do you want to do? Editing digital photos will only get more complicated as the technology continues to grow and rise. You might as well jump on the bandwagon before you fall too far behind! 

Digital Photo Printing is Better Than You Might Think

The wave of digital photography technology is rather incredible and moving rather quickly. As new technology is created, the older technology becomes more affordable, and the average photographer benefits by being able to purchase better cameras and camera equipment at a cheaper price. The convenience is incredible and sharing your pictures through the many options of the Internet has made it so easy to view and send pictures. E-mailing, social networking sites and sites dedicated to displaying your pictures are all great ways to help display and share your images. You can now have your pictures saved to several different places so you never lose a valued picture and your pictures won’t become weathered or damaged. The ability to alter and improve you pictures with digital-editing programs is incredible. Quite frankly, you can do things with your pictures that you never thought was possible just a few years ago.

All of these advancements are great, but there is one aspect that has some people longing for the good old days, and that is prints. With all the digital technology, you might be wishing you could just hold some actual pictures in your hands. The methods of online sharing have made pictures obsolete to a certain extent. And there is still the stigma that digital photo printing is inferior to what you were used to with film. When your pictures are so readily available on your computer, many people don’t think about digital photo printing, but you should.

Digital photo printing has come a long way. In the beginning, it was true that digital prints didn’t hold up to the quality of film prints, but as everything else in photography went digital, the quality of digital photo printing was forced to be upgraded with everything else.

Photo shops and photo labs of all kinds can print right from your memory card using the same machines that print your film pictures. You can also make basic alterations and improvements to your pictures at many shops before you print them. With digital photo printing, you can also go through and select which pictures you want to print so you get only the best pictures. No longer do you have to pay for the printing of an entire roll of film to only get and handful of pictures that you like.

Not only are the professional prints you get better, but you can get high-quality prints in your home, as well. The printers and the paper that you can use from your home computer have made great strides to resemble the printed pictures you are used to. There is also a large variety of printers you can purchase for your home. If you want a very basic printer just to make prints of pictures of your family, then you have many choices. If you want a more advanced printer to give you the best prints you can get at home, you also have some options. Just like every other facet of digital photography, you now have plenty of options and all the quality you expect when it comes to digital photo printing.

What Can You Use Photoshop® For?

Rather than talk about the many great features of Photoshop, like getting rid of red-eye, or placing yourself on the top of the pyramids, let’s talk about photo retouching, that is, making people look prettier than they are in person. It may sound, well, less than nice, but in reality, whenever you get your photo taken by a professional photographer, they get on Photoshop and retouch every blemish, wrinkle and shadow from your face so you, in turn, get photos that make you look hot.

Use Photoshop to Clean Up

I helped my cousin at her wedding by acting as the photographer. They spent all the money and the honeymoon and wanted to give me, an aspiring photographer a little blurb to put in my resume, “wedding photographer.” It sounded great and I got paid, so I figured, why not? I went around and took the photos. Cute flower girls in pink shoes holding hands, giggling bridesmaids, and handsome groomsmen. Guests in feathery hats and the bride and groom kissing and smashing cake on each other’s faces, not to mention the family group shots. So, at the end of the night, armed with my 4GB memory card I drove home and turned on my computer to use Photoshop. Read more about the relationship between Photoshop and digital photography from John W Scherer on these other pages.

It’s a good thing I know how to use Photoshop because looking through the pictures, I realized that some people, really needed a little more makeup and some people, needed a little less. Some people probably didn’t want their pimples to be immortalized and some people might want those cute little wrinkles and bags under their eyes to disappear forever. Lucky for them, I use Photoshop and got to work, fast.

Rubber-stamping and cloning into the wee hours of the morning I had de-bagged, de-wrinkled and de-pimpled half the photos in my cache. Things were looking up for my photo subjects as I continued to use Photoshop for the next couple of days.

Things Look Better After You Use Photoshop

So, it was time to make some shots look classy, and I immediately moved to black and white schemes. When I use Photoshop, I like to play with the light on a subject’s face, and since I was working with the bride’s photos, she needed to look radiant. Adjusting the saturation and changing the light source gave her a radiant glow that was proved more elegant when I changed her shot to a black and white photo. Perfect. Everything looked beautiful.

I went back to my cousin’s house about a week later with the portfolio for them to look at. My cousin cried and said everyone looked so beautiful that day. Maybe she forgot that her 13-year-old nephew actually has bad acne and that Aunt Jenna had used too much blush and looked like a tomato. Looking at the photos that I was able to use Photoshop on, I understood that the simple editing tools I had used had helped my cousin remember, for a lifetime how beautiful and magical every moment of her wedding had been. And who cares if Uncle Dan looked a little less heavy-eyed or Grandma Annette looked a little younger, everyone wants to look beautiful and see themselves as such. Because I could use Photoshop, I can help them feel as beautiful as they look in the pictures.

Learn a Photo-Editing Program and Enhance Your Memories – John W Scherer

Let’s face it. Photos have gone digital. Most everyone has a digital camera and has spent hours uploading them onto their computers and maybe even organized them into digital photo albums. I love this method of storing and sharing photos. I think it is convenient, affordable and fun. But let’s take it a step further. It is time for a photo-editing program. Learning a photo editing program will give you the tools to make your photographs the absolute best that they can be. Whether you want to use an advanced program like Photoshop® CS2 or something a little more user friendly like Photoshop Elements, you can master it if you take the right steps to learn.

There are many lessons and tutorials out there, but I have found that Video Professor is the most efficient and effective way to learn Photoshop. It can either be sent to your door or you can take the tutorial online. They are divided into three segments and will take you from being a beginning photo editor to an expert photo editor. Plus the tutorial can be fast-forwarded, rewound, stopped and paused so you will never be left in the dust. Don’t just fiddle around in your photo editing program of choice until you kind of do what you wanted to do. Master the program and take your photographs to the next level.

Get Rid of Red Eye with a Photo Editing Program

Have you ever taken a great photo of someone only to have the dreaded red-eye effect ruin the picture? Well, this is one of the easiest things to resolve in a photo editing program. All you have to do is make a channel mixer adjustment layer and set the red channel to red 0 percent, green 50 percent and blue 50 percent. Don’t get scared you’ll get a completely off color image. Now select the mask of the adjustment layer and fill it with black by pressing Alt-Backspace. As the last step, select the paintbrush and paint on the mask with white to reveal the effect of the adjustment layer. Select the paintbrush that is the size of the red spot in the eye. The final result is very natural and convincing.

Do Not Fear, a Photo Editing Program is Here

Although it may seem that working in a photo editing program is time consuming and everything takes to many steps, it should not scare you. Once you learn the toolbars and some fundamentals, you will be able to expand your photo editing skills and do any and everything you ever wanted to do with your photos.

Take a Photoshop® Course and Save Your Sanity

By no means have I spent very much time working in Photoshop, and by no means am I any good at the program. But the one thing that I am certain about when it comes to Photoshop it is that the overwhelming majority of time I have spent working in the program, I have been rather frustrated. It is at least a five to one ratio of being mad as opposed to satisfied when it comes to my Photoshop experience, and that would be a conservative estimate. I never really considered taking a Photoshop course, partially out of stubbornness and partially because I have never worked with Photoshop all that much. But I always wish I was better with the program. It is one of those skills that can only come in handy for any number of reasons.

I almost always feel like I am doing something wrong, and I usually am. If that is not the case, there is usually a way that what I did could have been done more easily. Sometimes I feel that if I would have taken a Photoshop course, the time I spent learning the ropes would have saved me a lot of time down the road. There is usually one small step that I forgot that is preventing me from completing the task or getting something to actually look the way I want it to. I have never even wanted to do anything that advanced. I usually just want to create a certain look or effect or design a logo or background. Long story short, nothing comes easy for me in this program, and I probably should have taken a Photoshop course at some point.

For others who are just starting to learn the program and want to avoid some of the frustration that I, and many others, have experienced, there are many learning tools that can help keep you sane. A Photoshop course or an explanation of the program’s features is available on the Photoshop web site for virtually every program they offer. There are plenty of other informative sources on the Internet that you can browse through or look for solutions for certain problems.

If you want a more comprehensive Photoshop course, Video Professor has interactive CD tutorials for most of the versions of Photoshop. These tutorials play atop the Photoshop program you are working in so you can watch the Photoshop course while you work. You can also pause, rewind and fast-forward the tutorial at any time so you can skip over some of the tools that you already know or review some techniques you are having trouble with.

Whichever route you choose to take, some form of Photoshop course is better than none at all. There are programs that you can have success with if you try to teach yourself, but this is not one of those programs. Photoshop is a complex program, and you could spend an eternity learning everything that it is capable of, but for your sanity’s sake you should have some kind of learning aid.

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned

I hope there’s a high-speed Internet connection in heaven. Not because I’m that addicted to the Internet. Heck, you’re assuming that’s where I’m headed. No, I hope there’s that high-speed connection so God knows how easy and tempting it is to sin with abandon while online. For that matter, are digital sins covered in the good book? I don’t remember seeing a commandment on the subject.

Now before you get the wrong idea, I’m not using the Internet to sin like the other 95 percent of the world is. My digital sinning is restricted to greed, envy, sloth and gluttony. Seems like every time I jump online I find a way to commit one of the aforementioned sins.

(Read more on the subject from John W Scherer on the subject here.)

Take envy for example. You know how easy it is to window shop for things you have no chance of ever affording? Have you been to Ferrari’s web site? Or Apple’s? I have. Many, many times. And when I leave, there’s a pool of drool on my desk.

But my digital sinning doesn’t stop there. Despite the fact that rarely is there anything interesting being reported, I’m a news junkie. If there is a breaking story that I happened to be interested in, I want constant updates and I want a lot of them. Greedy and gluttonous and I don’t care.

Which brings me to sloth– perhaps the most egregious of my digital sins. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to check my e-mail and the next thing I know three hours have passed with me accomplishing nothing. Just like that, three hours wasted. Very slothy, I’d say.

So, how do I atone for my digital sins? I suppose that depends on how guilty you think I feel, because, if you want to know the truth, I don’t feel too bad. Honest. Sure, there are better ways I could waste my time, but why? The Internet’s too much fun.

–Patrick C.

Digital Filters Can Have a Dramatic Effect on Your Pictures

Photoshop® has a lot of different tools to make alterations and changes to your pictures. From the basic to the complex, there is no other way to make such a difference in how your pictures look. This program is a pivotal tool for designers of all kinds and also key for everyday people who want to make their pictures better. Either way, digital filters are key tools that you might want to understand if you work with Photoshop with any consistency.

I like wasting time with digital filters by trying just about all of them on every picture I work with and then trying all the different combinations. The effects that you can achieve with digital filters run the gamut. You can apply certain filters that do very little and almost wouldn’t be noticed by the untrained eye, or you can make your picture look like a stained glass piece or a mosaic painting.

One of the advantages to take advantage of is the preview feature. For each of the digital filters, you can preview a small portion of your picture and what the particular effect will look like. This is especially useful with large pictures as it can take a long time for the filter to take effect over the entire picture. If you are just trying out a bunch of different filters to get familiar with them, this is almost the only way to work with them.

The filter gallery allows you to view a lot of different filters and the thumbnails that depict what they look like. You can organize the gallery according to the digital filters you use most so they are more accessible. Not all of the filters are available in the gallery so keep that in mind. You can also manually adjust the effect or strength of each filter so it is more subtle or stronger. Some digital filters, such as the “Lens Flare” have a light that comes from the corner, and you can also adjust the length and overall strength of something like that.

A filter’s effect will only be applied to the active area of a picture, this can be the entire picture or just a selected or visible area that you determine. There are ways that you can select only the subject of the picture and apply one of the digital filters to the background in order to emphasize your subject and create a powerful image. You can also manually soften the edges of a filter in order to give it a more feathered effect.

Filters can help to disguise faults in your pictures and also create an entirely new feeling for the picture. These are relatively easy to use and as you get more practice, you will become better at using them in coordination with other tools and applying them to only certain parts of your pictures. There are also ways to download third-party filters into Photoshop so you have even more options.

Learning to Use a Palette Brush in Adobe® Photoshop®

Using a palette brush in Adobe Photoshop is not only a great way to fix colors and edit out mistakes; a palette brush can dramatically change the arrangement and look of your picture. Many people tend to think that tools in photo-editing programs are difficult to use and understand and will avoid them. The reality is that these tools are user-friendly and can really help bring out the best in your pictures. So, for this let’s look at what a palette brush can do you for, and how to use and understand its functions.

 

<h2>Where to Start?</h2>

 

Let’s start from the beginning and go over what a palette brush is. A palette brush is a collection of different brush shapes that can help you create different dynamics in your pictures. From large to hairline sizes you can create broad and thin strokes in elliptical, straight and skewed patterns. There are preformatted strokes to choose from, but you can also create your own to fit your personal needs.

 

<h2>A Quick Run Through On Using a Brush Palette</h2>

 

I am going to talk about using the brush palette in Photoshop, so, start with a picture and select the brush tool on the side panel. You will notice that there is a tablet and in this tablet you can choose the size, effect and dimensions of your palette brush. Choose what works for the area you want to edit and remember that if you make a mistake, you can always go back and undo it. In the palette brush, you can use other effects from the brush library. These include chalk, scatter and spray effects. You can also find designs like snow flakes, stars and squiggles to help give an extra pop to your photos!  

 

Playing around like I said is one of the best ways to learn the most, fast. Try moving around the scatter and hardness of the palette brush, by adjusting these the effect will be very different. The sharper you make the palette brush, the closer together the color will be. By playing with the sharpness on the palette brush you can sharpen and soften edges on people, scenes and edges in general.

 

<h2>Where Else Can You Get Help?</h2>

 

While looking online and reading what other people have to say about programs and their applications can be very helpful, if you are looking for an in-depth guide to a program like Photoshop, it is usually a great idea to find a tutorial. If you are interested in learning palette brushes, then chances are there is a lot you can still learn. Try looking for online tutorials or CD-ROM tutorials that you can order that will give you the information you need. Companies exist, one such being Video Professor. Video Professor offers a great Learn Adobe Photoshop tutorial and it takes only three hours. The 3-disc set is fun, easy to use and you will learn tons! From the palette brush to the most advanced features Photoshop has to offer, you can know it all.

Learn Photoshop® and Avoid the Endless Frustration

My experience with Photoshop is that it is a very impressive program that is capable of doing so much. But most of all, it can be very frustrating to use. I have spent hours trying to accomplish something that seems relatively simple only to have it fall apart for reason unbeknownst to me. I can only attempt to calculate the hours that I have wasted because I never really took the time to fully learn Photoshop. And I haven’t really used the program all that much in my life. I can only imagine the time spent battling this program by people who use it everyday.

I have had people who are pretty proficient with Photoshop at a loss for an explanation as to why I can’t get the result that I want. I think that, aside from being an extremely complex program, much of the problem is that people kind of dive into the program and try to learn as they go. But if people took the time to gather resources and really learn Photoshop before they started using it regularly, they would probably see better results. I realize the importance of actually using the program as the only real way to learn the program, but if you used an interactive tutorial like the one offered by Video Professor, you would probably learn Photoshop more quickly.

I used the program in several of my design classes in college, and we did some step-by-step tutorials where we turned some fruit into a face or something like that, but I never retained much and found myself just asking more questions when I was actually working on my projects. Somehow it just didn’t translate. I have also known people who are good with Photoshop, but still occasionally curse themselves when they find out that a certain process they have done forever can be done in much fewer steps. Photoshop is a fun program to play around in, but when I really need to get something done, I find myself wishing I had taken the time to fully learn Photoshop.

Whenever I was having trouble and had to result to a manual, I spent so much time rereading the instructions and looking back and forth between the book and my computer screen. I felt the process moved really slowly and was still never sure if I did it right until I was absolutely finished. I always felt like I was one click away from destroying everything I had worked on. Needles to say, I didn’t find reading a manual to be the most effective way to learn Photoshop.

I never really wanted to do anything spectacular with Photoshop and surely never wanted to work with it everyday as part of my career. I just liked using it for design projects and hoped that what I made looked sleek. But most of all, I just wanted to learn Photoshop without wanting to punch my monitor the entire time.

Learn Publisher® for Business or Pleasure

There are a lot of jobs that you can take care of if you learn Publisher that you would normally have to pay a printing shop to do for you. Creating something yourself is almost always more cost efficient and is certainly more rewarding than outsourcing a project. You will also have more control over the appearance of the final product, which is nice for perfectionists like myself. So if you are creating your own business card, invitations, stationary, newsletter or any number of other items, you can save money and gain control if you learn Publisher.

One of the most common projects that you might want to use Publisher to create would be a business card. Whether it is for your business or just for yourself, a business card is a great way to network and also one of those items that you might hate yourself for not having in the right situation. If you are just making a personal card, an advantage of using Publisher is that you can choose to make as few or as many as you like. If you order from a larger printing company, you are likely to run into a minimum order that far exceeds what you really need, and you end up paying for hundreds of business cards that you may never use.

If you learn Publisher, you can create your own business card, save the design and print them off as you need them a few at a time rather than hundreds at a time. You can also make adjustments to the design as you desire. Use one of the many different templates already on the program to create a card or to design your own custom layout. You can also incorporate your own logo that you create in the program or in a program like PhotoshopÒ. All you need is some quality paper and you can have business cards that look every bit as professional as something that cost double.

Learn Publisher and you can also create the layout for your own stationary. When sending faxes or memos, you can have a very professional appearance for yourself or your business, and it is probably easier to create than you think. This is relatively simple, but can be impressive when dealing with business partners or applying for jobs. Creating informative brochures for a business or non profit organization is another job you can tackle when you learn Publisher. As with many of the other features, you can create a brochure from one of the templates created by Publisher, or you can design your own custom template. Incorporate text, pictures, graphs, art and more to help spread the word for an event or other cause. A pamphlet can be another thing you are glad you created and would be sorry if you hadn’t taken the time to do so.

Creating invitations, your own birthday cards and many other fun items is easy when you learn Publisher. You can also learn how to create your own newsletter for your family or charitable organization. Learn Publisher and take control of so many of the things you never thought you would.