Photo editing has changed a lot since the days of printing photos in the darkroom. Actions that used to take hours of painstaking work can now be done or, more importantly, undone at the click of a mouse. So, if you’re just getting started you first want to learn about the basic terminology of digital photography editing software. Here is a quick guide on photo editors to help get you started.
Digital Photography Editing Software
There are many, many pieces of software dedicated to photo editing on the market. They have an incredible range in terms of both price and quality. In the end, you will need to decide what you are willing to spend and what you want to do with it. In this article, we won’t discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each photo editor, but know there is a lot of options to choose from depending upon what you want. If you’re looking for free editors, you should look at The Giimp or Paint.net or if you want to buy a professional program definitely check out Adobe Photoshop.
Functions of Photo Editing Software
Although photo editing software can be very complex and allow for endless creativity, here are a few basic things that you’ll want to know right away.
- Cropping: Cropping is when you take parts of a photo you don’t need, then get rid of them by redrawing the frame. So, anything inside the frame will become your new cropped image while anything outside the frame will be deleted. One important thing to remember about cropping is that it changes the final dimensions of your photographs, so if you’re planning on printing or display them in wood picture frames them make sure you crop with the same aspect ratio (width to height).
- Contrast: The contrast refers to how much the tones or colors stand out from each other in the picture. By adding contrast, the darks will get darker and the lights will get lighter, but if you remove contrast your image will turn into a gray mess. Higher contrasts can make for interesting imagery, but will also make the grain of your photos stand out more.
- Level of Brightness: Brightness refers to the level of lighting of the entire picture. If you’ve taken a picture that turned out too dark, turning up the brightness may help some of the details stand out. If you slowly increase the contrast and brightness together, you may be able to save an otherwise un-usable picture.
- Photo Saturation: Saturation refers to how deep your colors are. In a color image, if you completely remove the saturation the image will turn to black and white. By turning up the saturation, the colors in your picture will quickly look excessively bright and unnatural.
- The Hue: Hue impacts the tone of an image. Adjust the hue and your entire image will shift from a blue or green tint to red, purple, or any other color. Although it takes a little time to get used to, changing the hue can make a big improvement to images taken under fluorescent light.
- Transforming Your Photo: Although each software does it differently, they all allow you to rotate, resize or flip your picture. Hopefully you won’t have to make too many adjustments of this nature, but should an image turn out slightly crooked it’s good to know you have alternatives.
No matter which editing software you use, you will find a way to adjust all of those elements. A good start for most digital photos that will really bring out the color and add depth is to reduce the saturation and increase the contrast - this will have a great effect on your shots. Otherwise, do your best not to rely on editing and try to get all of the work done in the camera. If you’re going to spend time editing a picture, make sure you start off with a good picture and make it better instead of trying to make a bad picture good.