Let’s face it—sometimes, even when we take all the precautions to take a perfect picture, something doesn’t end up right. The snapshot may look fine on your camera’s LCD screen, but when you view it in full size on your monitor, you start noticing some problems. The good news is that most of such minor problems can be fixed in Photoshop. Here’s a look at some common issues.
Incorrect Exposure Levels:
This is an exercise we advise for all images. Even if you feel that the exposure level is just right for your image, try playing around a bit with the levels in Photoshop and look at the difference. We’re not asking you to always make changes in your clicked photos, because sometimes, imperfect exposure works great for the feel of the picture. But still, seeing what a little level adjustment can do won’t hurt anyone, and can always be undone. So how does one adjust levels? Simple just open an image in Photoshop and press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[L]. You will instantly notice a difference in the lighting and the colours of the image.
If you want a bit more control, you can adjust the Brightness and Contrast settings manually by going to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Move the brightness and contrast sliders around until you’re satisfied, and click OK— or just cancel if you think you’ve done something wrong.
Colour Correction:
There are times when a camera can’t seem to get the white balance of an image perfect, and sometimes you just wish to give the image a tinge of some extra colour that would enhance the mood of the overall composition. It’s times like these when the Color Balance tool comes into play. This is what you need to do:
1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Press [Ctrl] +[B] on your keyboard to open the colour balance window
3. Play around with the sliders until you think you’ve got a dominant colour that adds more mood to the picture
4. Click OK to accept the changes or Cancel to undo
2. Press [Ctrl] +[B] on your keyboard to open the colour balance window
3. Play around with the sliders until you think you’ve got a dominant colour that adds more mood to the picture
4. Click OK to accept the changes or Cancel to undo
Cropping:
If there are some unwelcome distractions in your picture, like a man walking in from the edge, or if you seem to have captured so much background that the subject gets lost somewhere in between, the crop tool is exactly what you need. To use the crop tool:
1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Press [C] on your keyboard to select the Crop tool
3. Select the area you wish to keep on the image
4. Press [Enter] on the keyboard, and you’ll have theimage cropped to the selection
2. Press [C] on your keyboard to select the Crop tool
3. Select the area you wish to keep on the image
4. Press [Enter] on the keyboard, and you’ll have theimage cropped to the selection
Red-Eye:
Red-eye reduction can be very tricky. If not done right it can make eyes look very unnatural, which could get quite distracting. Earlier, I wrote published a post on Red-Eye Removal .
Resizing Images:
There are many situations where you’ll need to get an image to fit into a specifically sized space. If you’ve been trying to resize graphics and they’ve ended up squished horizontally or vertically, this tip should help you out. Say the size of your image is 584 by 400 pixels. We need to resize
the image so that the final size is 200 by 300 pixels.
To find out the size of your image, select Image/Image Size from the Photoshop menu bar. This dialog box gives you the width, height and resolution of your image. You’ll see a checkbox next to the word Proportions. Don’t uncheck that checkbox—your image will be squished if you do.
You need to change only one dimension. Photoshop will then do the math for you and figure out how big the other dimension needs to be in order to retain the correct proportions for your image. Which dimension do you change? Select the dimension that will need to change the most. In this example, we’re changing an image that is 400 x 584 to 300 x 200. The height dimension in this example needs to change the most, so we’ll change the height from 584 to 200.
Photoshop scales the width size proportionately, making the image 137 pixels wide.
Now you’ll need to change the width of the image. You don’t want to use the Image/Image Size for this. Instead, we’ll use the Image/Canvas Size function. What the Canvas Size does is to add pixels to your image, and it fills them with whatever background color you have selected. Canvas Size changes the size of your image by adding to it, leaving the original image unchanged. The Image Size command changes the size of your image by anti-aliasing it.
Change the width number from 137 pixels to 200 pixels. The Placement graphic gives you a choice of where the extra pixels will go: to the left, to the right of your image, or on either side of your image. Leave the original image centred, which is the default. Your image should now be an almost-perfect rendition of the original image, constrained in its proportions.
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