The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Photo Fixing Helen Bradley © |
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One graphics program is never enough, so Helen Bradley lists her top 10 photo fixing tools and tells you where to find them |
Ask anyone what their favourite graphics program is and chances are that they'll
have more than one. In an ideal world, every feature you'd want in
a graphics program would come in one piece of software, but unfortunately,
that's seldom the case. Instead, you'll find your ideal graphics program
is a mix of a little bit of this, a pinch of that and a handful of something
else. I've gathered a list of 10 features that most of us will want to have in a
graphics program and where you might find them.
Some will be in the software you already own and use, others will be found
elsewhere and I'll show you what they are and where to find them. There are some
surprises in this list too - for example, you might wonder, as I do, why
something as simple as a tool for printing multiple photos on a single sheet of
paper in an arrangement of your choice should be so difficult to find? My list
is in part, subjective, however I hope you'll find food for thought and
perhaps some answers to features you'd like to have in this list. Who knows, you
might even find your program has tools you didn't even know were there?
Spot Healing Tool
When you have a photo with blemishes of one sort or another, a spot healing tool
is a handy way to fix the problem. Using a spot healing tool or brush you simply
paint over the problem area of the image and it's fixed automatically. The
healing brush looks at the pixels around the area you've painted over and it
uses these to fix the problem.
The tool is particularly handy for facial blemishes and for removing small dust
spots on scanned photos and other minor problems such as spots on an image
caused by dirt on the camera sensor. This tool is available in Photoshop and
Photoshop Elements as the Spot Healing Brush Tool and a similar one-click
version can also be found in Corel PaintShop Pro
X2's Makeover tools collection as the Blemish Fixer.
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Red Eye Fixes Red-eye fixing tools have been standard issue in most photo fixing programs for years. While these tools let you select pupil size and the amount of darkness to apply to the eye, they remain fairly unsophisticated and limited in their effect. The granddaddy of red eye fixing commands comes with PaintShop Pro. For many versions now, Paint Shop Pro has included a complex red eye fixing tool which not only gives detailed control over the size of the fix and position of elements such as the glint but which can also fix animal red eye which is considerably different to human red eye problems. If you find yourself needing a better than average red eye fixing feature, then PaintShop Pro is worth checking out. Smart Cloning |
Fade A Fix
Sometimes you'll perform a fix on an image and, immediately after it's been
performed you decide that the effect is too intense. For example, you may want
to apply a filter to an image but reduce its impact. Photoshop has a Fade option
that you can apply immediately after applying a fix to the image. To do this,
apply a filter or an image adjustment such as a levels or curves adjustment and
then choose Edit > Fade to display the fade dialogue for the correction. You
then use the opacity slider to reduce the effect and, if desired, apply the
effect using a blend mode.
Straightening An Image
Straightening an image is one fix that should be dead simple but typically
isn't. Some programs require you to jump through hoops to do a simple thing like
rotating an image so the horizon runs horizontally across the image. Photoshop
makes this a two-step process where you first use the measure tool to draw along
the horizon and then use the rotate feature to rotate the image.
Photoshop Elements has an auto straighten command that does a passable job (some
of the time) and a manual tool that lets you draw along the horizon to
straighten the image. PaintShop Pro uses a similar process but you can adjust
the angle before committing to it and it'll crop the image to a rectangle when
it's done if desired. The Gimp has a visual rotation tool
but without a line to check things against, you have to rely on guesswork for
the amount of rotation to use.
Skin Tone Fixes
One problem you'll encounter when colour-correcting is images that contain
people. It's far easier to correct a landscape or streetscape than it is to do
this when people are present. We all know when someone's skin colour looks
wrong, but fixing the issue isn't always
as easy as knowing there's something wrong.
Photoshop Elements has a fantastic tool for adjusting colour in an image based
on selecting a correct skin tone. To use this choose Enhance >
Adjust Color > Adjust Color For Skin Tone and then click on the skin area of the
image. The skin sliders jump into position and the ambient light is adjusted to
match the image. If you're satisfied click OK and if not, adjust the Tan, Blush
and Temperature sliders until the person's skin tone looks correct. Chances are
that if the skin tone is correct then the rest of the image will be colour
corrected at the same time.
Making Selections
If there's one thing that can consume a lot of editing time and which can mean
the difference between a good fix and a bad one it's making an accurate
selection. Most programs offer a range of selection tools of varying ease and
application. One handy means of selection is to paint on the image.
In this respect Photoshop's Quick Mask tool is a good one. To use it, start by
making a quick selection in the area that you're interested in and then click
the Edit in Quick Mask Mode button in the tools palette. You'll see a red mask
appear over the image and you can then paint with black to add the mask to the
image or paint with white to remove it.
Everywhere the mask has been removed will be selected when you click the Edit in
Standard Mode button. Photoshop Elements has a quick selection tool which
attempts to find areas of similar colour as you paint over them and Paint Shop
Pro has an Edit Selection brush for finetuning selections.
Smarter Black and White
In days gone by the quickest way to a black and white image was to convert the
image to greyscale, either by using the greyscale conversion option
or by dragging the saturation slider to a negative value to remove all colour
from the image.
Today's black and white conversion tools are
more sophisticated and let you to tweak the relative amounts of the red, green
and blue channels which are used in the black and white conversion. These tools
are now available in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, PaintShop Pro and even
Picasa.
Using these, you can create quite spectacular custom black and white images by
tweaking the amount of each colour that contributes to the final image.
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Smart Filters Until Photoshop CS3 came along most filters or effects that you apply to images in photo editing programs were applied to the actual image and can't be undone later. Photoshop CS3 introduced a Smart Objects option for Filters that lets you convert an image into a smart object before applying a filter to it. This allows you to come back later and adjust the filter or even remove it without altering the remainder of the image. Smart Printing One thing that should be simple to do and typically isn't is printing multiple images on a sheet of paper. Of all the programs that I've had experience with, PaintShop Pro has the smartest and easiest tool for printing multiple images on a page. Provided your images are open you can launch the Print Layout option and assemble a series of images on a sheet of paper and size them as you want them to look. You get total control over how everything is laid out and the sizes you use. You can save the layouts you use as templates, with images or without, so you can reuse them later on. While multiple image printing options are available in most photo editing programs they're typically cumbersome to use and lack the flexibility of the PaintShop Pro tool. Depending on the photos you take and the fixes you use, you'll likely find that there one program that you gravitate to for most of your photo fixing work and other programs that you turn to when you need the specific tools that that only that program can provide. |
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Things that influence the choices you make include how easy the program is to find your way around and to use, and which tools you use most regularly. Until the perfect graphics program is invented, most of us will use more than one program, switching between them as needs dictate.
Note: Helen Bradley© Permission to copy or quote extracts from this article may only be done with the
written permission of the author.
Reprinted from the August 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
