In this article I am going to focus more on how to achieve the end product, the image you wish to proudly show to your friends, family and perhaps even print it to give it that special place on the wall in the living room.
Now before we are going to do so I again wish to emphasize on the importance of the basics; composition and light.
For this example we are going to use some elements very common to beginner photographers out there; this shot was taken by my wife using a Sony TX5 compact camera, a landscape she perfectly timed (realize my wife is the click ‘n snap kind of shooter having learned ‘some’ basics from me) and Adobe Photoshop Elements, the little sister if Adobe CS Photoshop.
There are obvious differences between the two software packages but I am not going to discuss it here. What I do want you to know is that Adobe Photoshop Elements is very affordable (sometimes comes for free in packages such as camera kits, scanners, video cams and so on) and easy to learn compared to the big brother CS. And, since a lot of you are scared of too many buttons and spending too much money, a lot of you can actually learn something today without feeling limited by not having the tools readily available!
First a few humble words on the image. I told my wife to look out for interesting objects while taking photographs and in landscapes to be careful with horizons in the middle. Furthermore I told her to look out for that special moment we tend to call light. While she took this shot she was the only out there whereas before and way after the moment she was surrounded by newbies using fancy DSLR’s and flashguns likely to go home ending up very disappointed.
The light that was captured here was overwhelming my wife so much that she forgot about the rule on the horizon, but don’t worry, we are going to fix that here!
The shot:
The composition, so-so and the light? Well, not bad, right? But we are not near to the final image yet. I open the file in Adobe Photoshop Elements and first I want to straighten the image as the horizon is slanted. Here I am using -2 to get the image straight.
Now I want crop the image to cut off the sides and save it. If you wish to keep your original intact, and it is recommended to do so, use the 'save as' option.
I like the keep the file maximum image quality so I set the value to 12, maximum.
The composition is still not ideal, look at how the horizon is more or less in the middle of the image, boooooring! We are going to crop again as such that we follow 'the rule of third'. Here we go .. !
Crop the image and save the file again before going on to the next step.
Now here is where the magic begins. You have carefully shot your image and now it is time for the software to do the auto adjustments for you.
Well, that is exactly what you don't want! The real power behind the software is you calling the shots, creating the final image as 9 out of 10 times the software will not be able to reproduce what you saw with your own eyes on that particular moment! So, forget about the 'auto' features as can be seen in below screenshot.
The image is too dark for my liking so we need to check the levels. Here's how we do it.
Look at how I pull back the light using the white triangle on the right hand side of the histogram.
Digital camera's are not the best tools when it comes to color accuracy and most of them need some color tweaks in processing. Not your Nikon D3s, Canon Mark III or Sony 900? You must be color blind!
Here we are working on a jpeg image and as far as I know Photoshop Elements does not have a RAW processor such as CS where you can adjust white balance and tint. That does not mean you are now at a dead end, there is a nice solution for it. Trust me ..
Once selected the following dialog window will open.
You can now use the color pick tool selecting a pure black, white or neutral grey area in the image to do the correction. Since I don't have any whites and blacks that are looking pure I go for the grey.
What is nice about this tool is that if you accidentally make a mistake, you can use the reset button and try again until the image is color wise to your liking.
Can you spot the difference? Good!
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