Photoshop retouching

Adobe Photoshop as well as other image editing software have revolutionised photographic retouching. Recent advances in digital image manipulation now allow for unlimited possibilities in the area of improving photographs through retouching. Which types of improvements are possible by retouching photographs with Photoshop software?

Skin blemishes like acne or scars can easily be removed using the retouching tools available in Adobe Photoshop software. One can learn these Photoshop techniques in no time. Next, damage to prints can be restored - the benefits of digital imaging for restoring old damaged or worn out photographs are one of the best reasons to learn Photoshop software.

When an old photograph is scanned it can be retouched to remove tears in the paper or water marks or blemishes. One can also restore colours that have faded. When you have retouched your image and it is like new again it will last because digital images do not deteriorate over time.

Another problem is closed eyes - this is one of the most common problems with groups. One finally gets the entire family together for a family photograph only to find that one or two people have closed their eyelids. This is not a problem for a skilled user of Photoshop software. One can easily open eyes and no-one will ever be aware.

Unwanted subjects can be easily removed. You can remove blemishes in Adobe Photoshop and another common use of Photoshop’s retouching capabilities involves removing unwanted people or objects in the image. People can be forever removed from photographs quickly and easily if you know how. Thorough retouching photographs has never been easier than it is now. Editing software applications have made it a breeze to open closed eyes, remove blemishes and scars, change colours, restore old damaged photographs and remove unwanted objects and backgrounds.

Fully understanding file formats and knowing the correct one to use will save you a great deal of time. A few file formats should only be used for web images, where others are ideal to get the perfect printout. This is a list of the most popular ones and the file formats:

JPEG stands for Joint Photography Expert Group, and is a file format based on a data-compression system. It can reduces file size to as little as ten percent of the original size without any great loss to the image quality or colours. It'ss an ideal format for web work.

With JPEGs you can control the quality standard by selecting different settings to save in. When the image is needed for large reproduction work a large setting of 9 or 10 should be used. When the image is for web use only use a setting of 3 or 4 or 5.

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format - it is also a compression format and is special designed for use in the web world. It consists of a standard set of 216 colours and is suitable for photography because of the loss to image quality and resolution.

TIFF stands for Tag Image File Format and is the best choice for images that are going to be reproduced as prints or enlargements. It can be compressed, but takes forever when trying to open it.

PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics and is mainly used for web work. Some people say that this will become the standard for web images - replacing GIF.

Good composition

Use the S Curve - it goes further than just a plain curved line. This is called the Line Of Beauty in photography. It's elastic, variable and combines charm and strength values. The S Curve has perfect grace. The S Curve is senn hundreds of times in drawings and paintings.

As an example, the double curve of a river makes an S curve. Also, a path, row of trees or bushes that curve one way and then the other way create the S curve shape. Have a look for this type of design and use it in your photos to add interest.

The Leading Line leads your eye in to the picture area easily like a road or fence, a shoreline or river, or a row of trees. Successful Leading Lines will lead your eye in to the picture and take it right to the main subject.

An unsuccessful Leading Line will take the eye into the picture but will lead the eye right out of the picture if there is no stopper to hold the eye in the picture frame; such as a tree, house or other large object. A centre of interest will act as a stopper and hold the eye in the image.

Good Leading Lines will start at the Lower Left area of the picture frame but not in the exact corner position. The eye likes to enter a picture frame at this point and the Leading Line will help it get in to the picture easily.

Implied Forms are a combination of Implied Lines and they help to hold a picture together at times. Now, the eye enjoys these interesting forms and will stay in the picture area to examine each one of them, if they are present in the image.

A circle is made up of a continuous curve and its circular movement keeps the eye in the picture. Many circles are found in nature and man-made objects and if you find them in an image before you, be sure to make good use of them in your image. An example - circles can be made up of children playing or a small pond or lake is usually in the form of a circle and of course many race tracks circular in shape.

A triangle or pyramid has a solid base and will show stability values. Triangles can show up in your viewfinder as three points in the scene, such as two trees on the grounds pointing to a cloud in the skyline. A fence in combination with a stream and a farm house can form the triangular composition in the image.

Shooting in subdued light

If you are shooting in subdued light, classic photography method is to select a very low shutter speed (tens of seconds or even more) to reveal the faintest objects in the scene. The conclusion is to take just one long exposure for the image. An alternative way to proceed, however, is to take several short exposures of the same scene and then adding them up with editing software like Photoshop packages. Now, this technique offers a wealth of advantages, leading up to better images and greater creativity for the photographer.

This method of summing up several pictures of the same scene is conceptually simple and easy to carry out. Many people take as many photographs as necessary so that when summing them up, the scene will be lighted as planned. Light from each photo will add to that of the other photos. Adding an appropriate number of such pictures, the photographer can get a final image properly exposed and satisfactory looking. When you want to take a look at a more in-depth description of this method and an example, you can contact us.

Let's look at two macro examples. Now, in the first one, we use the already present natural ambient lighting. With the second example, we provide the main lighting source. With the first case, the proposed method offers several advantages, but, in the second case, the benefits are even more extensive.

Due to thermal noise in CCDs, still digital cameras simply cannot offer arbitrarily long exposure time - the“B” setting does not exist in digital cameras at all. The proposed method overcomes the problem of very long exposure, impossible with digital cameras, even professional versions.

Yet another advantage in using the proposed method is noise reduction effects. At least a part of noise is stochastic, which means that it can add to or subtract from the signal noise. When we sum many noisy images, we make a sort of average, so reducing the noise effect.

Another advantage is we can dismiss faulty images as we want. Some may be blurred by micro-movement of the camera (eg due to the wind) or imperfect in other aspects. To give an example, an airplane or a car passing by may leave an unwanted path of light in the image. Now, there could be millions of reasons why an exposure could be faulty or incorrect. However, if we take just one long exposure, we will end up with a useless image. But if we take a lot of them, keeping all of them short, we can dismiss some of the shots when we edit. If the exposure requires some photographer’s actions, like firing sequences of flashes then this is all the more important.

The powerful capabilities of image editing software offer another benefit. For example, we can mask unwanted parts in some of the images. We could avoid saturation of the brightest parts of the image, for example. In this way, the lighting will be more uniform and spread out. We could alternatively do this creatively by dimming some portions of the final image on purpose. In this way, control over the brightness of the single parts of the image is much greater.