A Guide to Touching Up Your Digital Photos

Step 1: Start Up Your Image Editor

The first step, of course, is to fire up your favorite image editing program. For beginners, it's best to get a program like Ulead Photo Impact. It's a great tool that allows you to achieve professional photo effects using simple, easy-to-follow steps.
Ok - with your image editor ready, open the picture you want to edit within the program and save a backup copy.
 

Step 2: Remove Red-Eye

If you're taking photos of people, chances are you may have taken a photo with red-eye problems. This is easily removed with image editing software. In Paint Shop Pro, select the Red-Eye Removal tool in the menu and voila, the program does all the work for you. In Ulead PhotoImpact, there's an equivalent tool called Remove Red Eye in the Tool Panel.
 
Step 3: Rotate and Crop
If you've taken a photo in a wrong orientation, it's easily corrected with little loss in quality by using a rotate tool. You'll also want to do some cropping of your photo to remove cluttered surroundings that draw attention away from your subject. For example, I find cropping very useful if my subject is occupying only the middle portion of the photograph. Cut away the two sides of the picture and you have a much more professional look.
 

Step 4: Play with Color

Don't be afraid to experiment with colors. Image editing programs put a lot of power in your hands. You can make the leaves purple, change the entire photo to black and white, add a sepia effect - almost anything you want. A good photo editing program will have automatic color balance options to adjust color defects in your pictures.
 

Step 5: Blurring Effects

Sometimes I like to add a blurring effect to my photos. What you can do here is to select areas of the photo which are unimportant and blur them out. This will bring more attention to the main subject of your photo. For example, if I had a picture of a flower and I wanted to play down the details in the leaves in background, I might add a blurring effect to the background.
 

Step 6: Sharpen Up

Sharpening the image is the next step in the photo touch up process. Contrary to popular belief, you can't actually sharpen an out of focus image. What I typically do when sharpening an image is to selectively sharpen. That is, I select a part of the image, maybe a person's eyes and sharpen only that area. Leave unimportant areas unsharpened.
 

Step 7: Resize

Depending on your needs, you may want to resize your photo. If you're emailing a picture to a friend, you'll want to resize the picture down to a much smaller size. If you're printing the photo on a greeting card, you can scale down the image to the size of a 4x6 print.
 
Step 8: Save Your Work
Ok, you're pretty much done. Remember to save your work in the appropriate image format. Use the large TIFF image format if you want to retain all details for subsequent image editing. On the other hand, you can use the JPEG image format if you want to just send the picture via email or upload them to your website.

Conclusion

Alrighty then! Now you know the secret to touching up and preparing your raw digital photos for output. I'd say that not all the above steps are truly necessary in a given situation. Remember to use your discretion to see which is necessary. Don't be afraid to experiment and learn - practice makes perfect when it comes to touching up your photos.

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Essential Tips for Printing Digital Photos

Tip 1: Good Pictures Give Good Prints

This tip is pretty obvious. If you’ve taken photo at a measly 1 megapixel resolution, you can’t expect to have a huge A4 quality printout. If you’ve taken the same photo at a 5 megapixel resolution, then yes, you can have that A4 print. As a rule, remember that you need at least a 2 megapixel resolution photo to have a decent 4x6 printout.
 

Tip 2: Remove Defects from the Image First

I always apply this tip before printing any image. Check the photo itself to ensure there are no specks or noise. If there are, use your favorite photo editor to remove them if possible. Of course, remember to save a backup copy of the image first. You can read up this guide on touching up photos if you need help.
 

Tip 3: Crop if Necessary

Another image editing tip – crop the picture you’re going to print if it makes sense to do so. Sometimes, I find that my subject is located in the middle of the photo and I don’t really want to print the surrounding environmental detail. That’s where you should crop away the area around the subject first, then proceed to print. This saves you a lot of ink too.
 

Tip 4: Select a Good Printer

This is very important. Only use a quality printer to do the job. At home, I use a nice little Canon Pixma iP4000 printer to print my pictures. You don’t need a super high-end machine to print, just go for a mid-range inkjet printer that’s suitable for home use.
 

The Canon Pixma iP4000 photo printer

Always try to find a printer with excellent print quality (Canon and HP models come to mind) and an intelligent ink system. In the Canon Pixma iP4000 printer, for example, there is a 5 color ink system with individually replacable ink tanks. If one color runs out, I just need to replace that one color, instead of throwing away the whole cartridge.
 

Tip 5: Select Good Photo Paper

Many people tend to forget that good photo prints also depend on the paper you use. As a rule, you should go for paper that is of the correct thickness, produces good color and has good resistance to fading.

If you will be handling your photos a lot, try to choose thicker paper. If you intend to place your photos in an album, then paper thickness isn’t too important – you can choose thinner photo paper.

Color brilliance is important too. Try buying some sheaves of photo paper and print out some colorful images on them to test them out. Buy them in bulk only if the color tests turn out good.

I also like to check resistance to fading. Again, buy some sheaves of photo paper for testing. Print out some pictures, then expose them to sunlight for a couple of days. If you notice any fading, then avoid that brand of paper in future.

Hopefully, this article has made you realize there are some guidelines to producing good photo printouts. If you follow the tips above the next time you’re printing photos, I’m sure you will have printouts that you’ll be proud to share with friends and family.

Temperature

The other thing to look out for is the temperature under which the camera is stored. You should always keep the camera out of sun. One mistake that newbies always make is to store the digital camera in the extremely hot temperatures (e.g. the car boot). Don’t ever do that. It’s also important not to store the camera in extremely cold temperatures either.