Establishing Your Workflow
Getting Started with Image Editing
Image-Editing Workflow
Basic Retouching
Changing Colors for Impact
Cropping Tips
Presentation Gallery
Capturing the image with your camera has always been just the first step in creating a final image. In the film days, the darkroom became the next step to apply your creativity to an image. Today, your darkroom is digital and there are more possibilities than ever before.
This chapter encourages you to experiment and play with your images. It's like doodling: The more you play, the more you see what you can do with your images, which enables you to find styles that appeal to you.
Post-production is the term photographers use to indicate everything that happens after the image is captured. That includes loading your images from your media card to your computer, playing around in an image-editing program, all the way to the final printed image hanging on your wall. There are a lot of steps to get you from here to there and each photographer has his or her own, unique way of working, which is called workflow. Workflow is defined by Wikipedia.com as a reliably repeatable pattern of activity.
A good, consistent workflow is critical for digital photographers. Everything is a digital file that can be easily deleted, corrupted, or just plain lost! So, establishing an easy-to-follow workflow for your images is critical because it allows you to:
Consistently back up and archive your images
Organize your images so you can find them quickly
Preserve an untouched set of images so that you aren't working on your originals
Virtually eliminate the chance of lost or deleted images
Even if you are "just a snapshooter" you have probably already accumulated a fair number of images on your computer. Can you find the image you need quickly? If not, set up a workflow that works for you. The following is a basic workflow that you can follow as you get started. Once you expand your skills and understand all the components of the workflow, you can begin to adjust it to fit your specific needs.
Upload your images. Upload your images from the media card as soon as possible after capturing the images to avoid any mix-ups with accidentally formatting or overwriting the card. Create a folder on your computer desktop using a name or numbering system that makes sense to you (the important thing is to keep the naming consistent).
Choose File
Back up your files. After you rename the images, back up the folder by dragging it to an external hard drive (recommended but optional) or burn a disc with the renamed images, and label it ORIGINALS, and name it using your chosen naming/numbering system. Put this disc in a safe place (fireproof safe or safe deposit box are good options).
Retouch, crop, and enhance images as necessary in your chosen image-editing software. You now have at least one (hopefully two) backups on disc of your original, out-of-camera images. That disc with your original images on it is just like your negatives with a film camera and should be treated as carefully. All of the previous steps should be taken before you do any enhancements to any images. Now you can play all you want with the images in the folder on your computer desktop because you know that your originals are safe and untouched.
Backup your edited images. When you finish retouching and enhancing your images, back up those enhanced images to your external hard drive or burn another disc. This time you can label the disc FINAL PROOFS and reference your original number/naming system.
Output your finished images to a lab or printer. Output your final proofs to your favorite lab or your printer if you are printing your own images.
Ultimately, the key to a good workflow is consistency. If you unload, save, and file your images the same way every single time, you will have no trouble locating an image when you need it.
Not long ago, when choosing imaging software, you would have been limited to Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but now many entry-level programs are available, and some are free! For example, Picasa for Windows (from Google) is available as a free download. If you work on a Mac, iPhoto is a very easy-to-use image manager.
Image-editing software enables you to manage your photographs in the following ways:
Rename your files (for example, change from IMG_0932_2.jpg to grace_2007.jpg)
Organize and rate
Crop
Brighten, darken, increase, or decrease contrast
Color correct
Sharpen or blur
Add filters
Rotate
Correct red-eye
Convert color to black and white or even sepia tone
If you are seriously entering the world of digital imaging, however, don't spend a lot of time on entry-level programs — Adobe's Photoshop Elements and Photoshop are industry standard for image-editing software. If you can take on the challenge, you might as well spend your valuable time learning Photoshop Elements. We recommend finding a good, entry-level book on Photoshop Elements such as Photoshop Elements 5 For Dummies (from Wiley).
Photoshop Elements has many great, high-end features and once you get comfortable with it, you should find it very easy to use and intuitive. It also lays the groundwork for eventually stepping up to the full version of Photoshop. The commands and working space are identical between the two, with Photoshop providing more options and control.
Many budding photographers start image editing with Photoshop Elements, but even if you use different image-editing software, you can still follow the basics presented here. Setting up a consistent order of working in image-editing software allows you to work more quickly and achieve more consistent results. The following order is a generally accepted workflow for enhancing your images. The basic idea is to work from large changes to small changes in a logical order.
Tip
For $99 a year, you can join the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and receive its publications. This membership allows you to enter the Web site (www.photoshopuser.com) and learning centers to receive discounts and other perks. NAPP sponsors training workshops, which are relatively economical and extremely thorough.
Make tonal adjustments. It's best to make any exposure adjustments (a little bit lighter, little bit darker) as your first step. This includes any Levels or Curves adjustments that affect the overall lightness, darkness, or contrast of the image.
Make color corrections. Adjusting your white balance before you take the photo means much less work at this stage. Check Chapter 4 for White Balance details. However, you might have an image that has a strange color cast, such as too blue or too orange that needs adjusting. Do color corrections after tonal corrections.
Retouch as needed. Only after you have corrected the exposure and color should you begin other adjustments or enhancements to the image. This means that all the adjustments that affect the entire image have been made and now you are working refining the details.
Make any image enhancements. These include conversions to black and white or actions that give a different look to your image such as a super-saturated colors or high-contrast treatments.
Back up your files. After you finish fixing and retouching your image, back up the file that has been worked on save a copy for cropping and or sizing.
Crop and size your images. Working with a copy of your final file, crop to the size you want your final image to be. Because a digital file doesn't fit into the standard 8 × 10, 5 × 7 crops that we are used to seeing, you will need to size your image before uploading to a lab to ensure that the crop is how you want it to be. If you don't resize/crop your image, the lab may do it for you and your final print might be different than what you originally envisioned.
Note
Photoshop Elements is a great tool but it's important to remember that properly exposed images usually need very little done to them in post-production. Make it your goal to improve your technique on the front end or at the capture stage of photography rather than relying on an image-editing software fix later.
Portrait photographers most often use retouching techniques to eliminate blemishes and wrinkles in their subjects and eliminate distractions in the background. Fortunately, kids don't have wrinkles, so most retouching involved in children's portraits is limited to removing any marks on the face, such as scratches, disguising a runny nose, or removing blemishes on a teenager.
Here are the most commonly used techniques when retouching a portrait of a child:
Removing a blemish such as a scratch, pimple, or mark on a face or body
Whitening the teeth
Enhancing the eyes
Eliminating distractions in the background
If your chosen image-editing software has layers or something similar, you are in luck! One of the best things about Photoshop Elements is that it allows you to work in layers, which essentially is a quick copy of your image so you can manipulate it. If you mess it up, you can throw it away. If it's just right, you can save the image and you're done. Before you try any of the following fixes, use the press Ctrl+J/
The easiest way to remove a minor blemish or to smooth out the texture in your subject's skin is to use the Clone tool set at 30 percent opacity so that it just smooths out the texture of the skin rather than drastically altering its appearance.
The Clone Tool allows you to clone copies of a portion of the image and apply that copy somewhere else in the image. This comes in handy when there are areas you would like to cover up or delete altogether.
Most children have beautiful skin but when you are photographing adolescents, this is a great trick for smoothing out the occasional blemish. Select from unblemished skin close by the area you want to fix and brush over the area that needs to be fixed and the blemish will slowly disappear. This is also a good fix for dark circles under the eyes as in the before and after photos in 10-1 and 10-2. The key to all retouching is to keep it subtle because you don't want your subjects to look like plastic dolls. A little image editing goes a long way.
A quick fix for whitening the whites of the eyes and whitening the teeth is to set your Dodge tool at 20 percent opacity and carefully brush over the teeth and whites of the eyes until they are how you like them. Setting the tool at 20% allows you to lighten the teeth and the whites of the eyes without making them appear glowing. You can also use the Dodge tool to put a little sparkle into the irises of the eyes, but be careful that you don't overdo and make them look like an alien child! You can see the results of both the Clone tool and the Dodge tool on this before image of a toddler (10-3) and the after image (10-4). The little mark under the left side of his nose was removed using the above Cloning technique and the whites of his eyes were lightened to give his eyes more sparkle.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, a distracting element makes its way into the background of your image. In this case (10-5), it was the edge of the soft box on the studio light. Just go back to your Clone tool and change the opacity to 100 percent (10-6) and clone out the offending distraction as in 10-6.
Manipulation of photographic images has occurred in one form or another since the early days of photography. The majority of photographers have used their artistic license by altering their original captures to enhance or refine their story or style. With the advent of digital photography, the toolbox is much bigger and the possibilities are infinite.
Figure 10-5. ABOUT THIS PHOTO The before photo with the light visible on the left side of the image. 1/250 second, f/2.8 at ISO 100. ©Allison Tyler Jones / www.atjphoto.com
Figure 10-6. ABOUT THIS PHOTO After using the Clone tool at 100% and selecting the surrounding background to clone out the light. ©Allison Tyler Jones / www.atjphoto.com
Converting an image from color to black and white is probably the most common form of color manipulation you can use, and even the most basic image-editing software can handle this job fairly well. If you are just starting out, you may want to purchase ready-made Photoshop Actions or Plug-ins for Photoshop Elements that automate these steps for you, allowing you to manipulate your images quickly and easily.
Plug-ins and Actions allow you to tone your color prints (10-7) in just about any direction you want once you convert them to black and white: for example, black and white (10-8), sepia (10-9), and brown tones. You can make your own Actions, but if you are just starting out, it is easiest to just download them from the Internet. There are many free Actions available on sites such as www.atncentral.com, or you can purchase Actions from manufacturers such as Nik Software and Kevin Kubota. If you are using Photoshop Elements, make sure the actions you download are compatible with the Elements software. Many of them are only available for Photoshop.
Figure 10-7. ABOUT THESE PHOTOS These two beautiful young sisters were photographed on an overcast day at the beach, creating a soft but colorful photograph (10-7). 1/250 second, f/4 at ISO 160. 10-8 shows the same photograph reworked in Photoshop Elements following the easy directions in one of the software's tutorials to remove color to create a sepia photo. 10-9 shows the same photograph reworked in Photoshop Elements following the easy directions in one of the software's tutorials to create a black-and-white image. 1/250 second, f/4 at ISO 160. ©Ginny Felch / www.silverliningimages.com
Note
Please refer back to Chapter 5 if you need help with the finer points of composition. If you want to spend more time behind your camera and less time behind your computer fixing images, improve your technique in composition.
If you are absolutely certain of your framing and composition, go for it and take the picture. Otherwise, it is advisable to leave a little room around the image as you have composed it before you click the shutter so that you can refine the cropping at a later date, especially if you are planning to print them at the standard photo sizes (4 × 6, 5 × 7, and so on).
How you crop a photograph after you take it is as important as the original composition and final presentation of your image. After the photograph is made, you have a chance in post-production with imaging software to pay close and final attention to your cropping. Look at the example in 10-10. You can clearly see that cropping this image makes a huge difference in the impact it has.
When trying to decide on a crop after the photo has been taken, such as the one in 10-11, keep the following guidelines in mind:
Never crop off the hands or feet as in 10-12. This cropping error is often referred to as amputation. Either crop close to the head and shoulders or move out and crop below the hands as in 10-13, or back off completely and include the whole body.
Figure 10-10. ABOUT THIS PHOTO The cropped photograph is imposed on top of the entire original capture. You can see that cropping can change the story told by the image by either including or leaving out elements. 1/250 second, f/8 at ISO 400. ©Ginny Felch /
www.silverliningimages.com
Figure 10-11. ABOUT THIS PHOTO This is the full image taken of Daisy. 1/320 second, f/4 at ISO 1600. ©Ginny Felch /
www.silverliningimages.comTip
Imaging Factory Perspective (
www.theimagingfactory.com) is very simple and friendly to use for straightening a skewed horizon.Try to be creative so your subject is not in the very center of the photograph. Refer to general composition guidelines in Chapter 5, such as the Rule of Thirds.
Leave plenty of growing room around the child, particularly above the head. It is comforting visually to create a sense of space. This also applies if the child is moving, leave space in the direction he is going or came from, which also helps to keep the subject off center.
If a horizon line is visible, be sure it is straight. This can be done in a variety of ways in post-production if you didn't get it just right when taking the photo.
If you weren't able to eliminate all background distractions when composing, try to remove them with careful cropping afterward.
If the children are looking away from the camera presenting a profile, crop leaving more space in front of their line of vision. This gives the impression of space to look into, as in 10-14.
Capturing your image digitally gives you so many more options when it comes to printing your photos. Not only can you create different crops from the same image and change color to black and white for printing, you can also create online galleries at Web sites such as www.snapfish.com and www.shutterfly.com. Additionally, many of these Web sites have products you can purchase to place your images on to give as gifts, such as mouse pads, note cards, calendars, and so on.
Once you learn your way around Photoshop Elements (or another chosen image-editing program), you know how to retouch, enhance, and crop your images. You can then create your own custom storyboards that will add a graphic element to your work. Storyboards use multiple images from a photo shoot to tell a larger story than a single image can. Start with a blank document in Photoshop Elements sizing the document to the desired size of your finished Storyboard. Next, open several different images that you would like to use for your Storyboard project. Using the Move tool just drag and drop each image onto your original blank document. Use the Ctrl+T/
For example, the image in 10-15 could be used as a large wall print, the cover of a Christmas card, or for the cover of your very own coffee table book, as mentioned later in this chapter.
A gallery-wrapped canvas print is an image that is printed on heavy artist's canvas and then stretched on stretcher bars with the image wrapping around the sides of the stretcher bars. Available through your local photo processor as well as many online outlets, gallery-wrapped canvases are a bold, contemporary statement and so fun to do with sweet baby faces as in 10-16. If you are planning to print a very large image, you will want to first check with your processor to make sure the image you have has a high enough resolution (size) to enlarge it to your specifications.
It doesn't cost thousands of dollars anymore to have your very own coffee table book printed full of your own images as in 10-17. Check your local photo processor as well as online companies such as www.photoworks.com for hardcover books that you can customize with their layout templates, fonts, and wording.
The options for outputting your digital images are endless and so fun they can be addictive. Pick a couple of your favorite images and have some fun with them.
Cropping for Impact
Create a photograph keeping in mind the cropping guidelines discussed in this chapter. Find an image that you like but could possibly be made better by creatively croppingit. Crop it three to four different ways and note how the impact of the image is changed for the better or worse.
The image chosen demonstrates two of the cropping tips. The photographer left the little girl small in the photograph relative to the environment, and there is extra space before her as she skips down the stairs. This cropping gives the perspective of a little girl in a bigger environment, and you can see some of the foreground toward which she moves. If it had been cropped differently, to eliminate the stairs, for example, the girl might look as though she were flying.
Note
Remember to visit www.pwassignments.com after you complete this assignment and share your favorite photo! It's a community of enthusiastic photographers and a great place to view what other readers have created. You can also post comments, and read other encouraging suggestions and feedback.
