Digital photo enhancement software aids you as you improve photos, sometimes when you think the picture is damaged beyond repair enhancement will amaze you. Original photographs are almost never perfect. The most frequently used enhancements are: the brightness and contrast enhancement and the color cast correction. The brightness and contrast enhancement is used to adjust the gamma levels and fix the colors in the picture. The color washer is helpful plugin that is an automated version of the contrast enhancement. Color cast corrections are useful to fix the coloring of the picture, especially if the picture has a yellowish tint. The color washer tool can also help you out with this problem. These enhancements will help you out with the color of your photo.
What is re-sampling and how does it compare and differ from resizing? Both these tools are used to either enlarge or reduce a photo. Re-sampling is a little less heard of than resizing but a nice image editor will have it. The difference is this: re-sampling is actually the use of algorithms that you can select that will either re-calculate the amount of pixels (reducing the size of the image) or use interpolation to enlarge the photo. Re-sizing is a lot less complicated. All it does for enlarging is double the pixels and for reducing the image it just takes pixels out and sometimes completely deletes thin lines in the picture. Re-sampling is the preferred method for professionals because the image comes back clear and appearing unchanged. Resizing doesn’t work as well; it is the preferred method for beginners and amateurs because it is quick and easy. The picture ends up being blocky and choppy and won’t look as nice as re-sampling. Most image editors will have the option of both.
Big question for everyone is how to convert photo files in order to get smaller pictures. This is really helpful if you want to send photo files over the internet. There are two ways to do this: the lossless and the lossy formats. Lossless means that the image stays exactly the same as it was originally. Basically different methods are applied to get a smaller but virtually untouched photo. The most common format that photo software can hand is .png. The disadvantage is the image can still end up too big, but the image will be completely unchanged. Lossy formats will actually lose some information. The advantage to this way is you will be able to pick the size you want it to end up in. The common form it is saved in is a .jpg. This will create small photos that will upload places quite easily. There are the ups and downs for both of these forms, basically do you want a smaller original or do you mind some of the photo being lost in order to make it really small.
Viewing images is just as important as editing them. In order to easily access your images your photo viewer should be able to be customized, easily to use, have photo enhancement tools, printable contact sheets, convenient for attaining pictures, be able manage EXIF data and be able to batch process images. Some good ones are Zoner Photo Stuido which is quite user friendly. Another is Photophilia which is extremely adjustable and able to batch process. Selecting a photo viewer is important, depending on what kind of computer user you are you can select a viewer that is quick and easy or complicated but has some great functions. Some handy functions are: slide show, batch processor, editor functions, and zoom factor.
Batch imaging software is helpful when you want to have a lot of tasks all lined up and completed without interruption. It is nice when you have a whole bunch of images you want to be resized and don’t want to do it all manually. This is exactly what the batch image software is good at. E.g. You want to resize an assortment of photos to be 500 x 400, add a signature and compress them all to be 12kb. It is pretty simple to run most of the batch processors, decide what you want done, in put the commands, select the images and run the batch processor. Let it run as long as it takes, all done! A strategy to batch processing is putting all the images you want in a specific directory and then telling the program where it all is, not selecting all the images individually. There are a bunch of programs out there for batch processing, choose the one that has all the functions you want it to do, try to get something that isn’t just the bare minimum.
A handy tool to have if you don’t intend to collect thousands of pictures is a digital photo album. This is handy because you can add descriptions and make sure you get a nice looking album for people to look at. This is different from a photo view because it actually stores all the photos no matter where they are located. The program will actually go and find all your photos. This would not be recommended if you have more than 2,000 photos because if a file gets corrupted you could lose all your pictures. An online viewer would actually be useful because then after you used a batch processor you could upload them all to the site and have just as nice of an album online. In the end it is up to you whether even want an album in the first place.
Everyday many questions come in about the many processes with digital photography: Q: I had a hard drive crash. A recovery software program recovered a number of digital photos but for some reason saved them with the file extension “.PHB”. Photoshop can’t open this file so I can’t change it. Any ideas? A: A file with an unknown and bad file extension should be renamed first. After that it can be opened again. Easy recipes to rename a file or to rename a bunch of files at Rename File Extension. Q: My roommate, thinking to help save space, compressed my photos and saved them at the new smaller size. How can I undo it? A: First it is important to note that photo compression and photo resizing are 2 completely different things. The short answer is that neither photo compression nor photo resizing can be undone, since a part of the original information is lost and can not be retrieved by magic. There is a more detailed explanation at Photo resizing versus photo compression.
