Back to school tips for taking shots of events. PART 3 editing
Now you have all you photos and its time to download to your computer and edit them. Here you can add special effects, crop, and correct the color.
• Set up a file on your computer before downloading that will be easy to find. I usually use the name of the event and the date. Inside that file set up another file and name it finished. This is where you will save the photos that you have edited in your digital darkroom with different file name. It is recommended that you do not save over your original photo as it contains all the data from the camera when you took the shot.
• Once downloaded view your photos and erase ay that are unwanted. Your windows picture viewer is good for this.
• Next open your digital darkroom and select the photo that you want to edit.
The things that you will want to do before adding special effects or text are: I will use the photo I used of my son’s graduation in part one. As you can see it has a green overcast and its not quite centered.
Color corrections > start with your auto color correction if this does not make the photo appealing to you then you will have to start correcting individually
• Hue and saturation Shadows and highlights
• Selective color > here you can pick a certain color to adjust, If you feel there is too much red, you can lower the threshold for that color.
• Color balance
Repeat as much as you want until the photo looks good for you. Sometimes you may do one adjustment then another step or two and then go back and do the first adjustment again.
Once you have your colors correct crop our image to center the main subject. Save the image in your finished file under a different file name. if your camera assigns numbers to your image then it is best to keep the same number system but add a letter on the end of it. Example File name 1234 becomes 1234a.
Then get creative and add text, frames, etc or leave it how you have it. If you do get creative save this file under a different name than the first one, Example 1234b. that way when someone sees it and wants a copy you can ask if they want the creative one or the plain one. Most of the time, they will want the plain one.
Finished Photo
digital photography, photo editing
