How to Do: Photo Enhancing

Very often the image you see with your eye is not the one that comes out of the camera. And sometimes you just want to improve upon reality. The image you want is usually in there somewhere. This is how you get it.

If you have a digital camera you will have some digital editing software – it is usually packaged with the stuff they give you to import the pics. Sometimes it is a version of the professional industry standard, PhotoShop. You may rely on something like Paint on your PC It doesn’t really matter, they are all sufficiently like each other that knowing one means you tend to know them all.

Why bother?

Because very often the image you saw with your eye is not the one that comes out of the camera. The real image is usually in there somewhere, but a trick of the light or dark, has played havoc with it while it was in the camera. How often has a beautiful picture of a child been turned into Beelzebub because of red-eye caused by the flash? A ten second job will sort that out. Pictures too dark? – thirty second job. Washed out pictures, too much red, picture looks ‘cold’. All of these are where photo enhancement is called for.  

Some call it cheating, well if you have your picture taken by a professional photographer they will cheat from start to finish – not just with lens filters and lights, but with all this computer gimmickry as well.

But ‘retouching’ and ‘air-brushing’ is only part of it. You can completely change pictures. I have a friend who takes pictures of houses for estate agents. He uses Photoshop to put sunshine on rainy day pictures, he removes lamp-posts or random bits of roadworks or discolored brick-work.

In my professional life as a graphic desinger, I have used these tools to create surreal artwork by mixing and montage-making images. It’s great fun and of all the things I can teach you, this is the one I would most love to teach you.

Call me on 07017 343434 to get started.