Digital Photo Editing
You may not always capture the perfect digital photo, but a little digital photo editing can turn your so-so images into spectacular digital photos.
Red Eyes
As with regular film photography, sometimes your digital photographs may or may not come out perfect. The most common problem is the appearance of red eyes on digital photos taken in flash mode. This effect is caused by the speed of light of the flash; it doesn’t usually give your eye’s pupil time to close. The light is focused by the lens of the eye onto the retina at the back of the eye, thus illuminating the retina and focused back by the camera lens resulting in the red eye appearance.
In normal film photography, the red eye effect is prevented by angling the flash at certain angles as well as reducing shutter speed. With digital photography, the red eye effect is no longer a problem as almost all digital cameras come equipped with an option to reduce or prevent red-eye. The digital camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed and lighting levels to avoid red eyes.
However, having that option available on a digital camera does not necessarily mean everyone will remember to use it, especially when taking different types of photographs in a short time frame. Luckily removing red eyes from your digital photos is easy as almost all digital photo editing software comes with a pre-defined editing option to remove red eye. Much simpler than with a film and negative photography, where the red eye had to be eliminated before the picture was shot.
Lighting Balance
Another common problem that may occur in your digital photos is the lighting balance, where some photos may appear too bright or contrasting and some too dark and blurry. This is where you would need some basic skills and understanding of your digital photo editing software to edit these photos before sending them for print or to share with friends and family. Adjusting the brightness and darkness levels is general quite straight forward. You can find this option in the ‘tools’ section of your photo editing software. The option gives you a lever to drag left or right , up or down, to get the level of brightness or darkness you want.
Resizing Images
Another widely used digital photo editing option is to resize your photos. You can decrease the size to e-mail the digital image, or for smaller storage size. Or, enlarge the digital photo. However, a caution when making the digital image larger. It can appear pixilated or dotty because the pixels in the digital photo don’t increase in size or number.
Practice and Have Fun
And good practice before you do any digital photo editing is to always remember to keep a copy of the original digital image.
Digital photo editing can be a daunting task, but with a little imagination and creativity, digital photo editing can be fun especially when you learn the basic concepts of photo enhancements and manipulations in your editing software In fact, digital photo editing can save you money on printing fees by you only having to print the perfect, edited photo.
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