8Hi Pimps

I thought I would share some of my knowledge about image editing learned from years of experience and a few courses.

Note that all filters and functions you apply destroys some of the image data from your original. Always keep in mind that you will want to achieve the most possible from using as few steps as possible.

In this example I would like to go over the steps I take my photos/screenshots through to make them look a bit neater.

Let's start with the original:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...0_original.jpg

An image this big is not only annoying, its completely useless, and it takes bandwidth to download.

For general images 400 pixels width is a good starting point, so here is what we do:

Go to the menu item "Image > Images Size..." wich should look something like this:



Change it to something like this:



Now we have a more decent sized image to work with. Note that only true-color images (ie jpg) can be scaled this way, if you want to scale a gif wich has less colors you need to change the setting from Indexed Color to RGB Color in the menu "Image > Mode".

Now we want to view the image in 1/1. You can zoom in and out by using CTRL-minus or CTRL-plus on the numeric keypad. Note that in the following picture you see a 100% above the image. This means youre seeing the picture as its going to come out on the web. If you had been viewing a large image you might have had to zoom out to 50% or 25% to get the entire image on screen at once.



Now we want to edit the spectrum to make the image appear more bright, or make it a bit less bright if you have an over-exposed original.

We press CTRL-L or go to menu "Image > Adjust > Levels...". We get a window looking like this, and here we find 3 sliders that are of interest:



Moving the center gray slider makes the image brigther or darker. Just move it a little, as exaggerating always makes it looks smudgy or bleached.

If youre using a scanned original, you might have to move the black and white slider to where the "mountain" starts (nevermind this if you dont know what im talking about). You can also press the "Auto" button wich forces the image to use the spectrum to its fullest. Using Auto can also alter the color composition a bit wich is good if your scanner is old or if the photo is taken in a room where the light is not optimal.

If you have taken the picture in an environment where the light is not white, for example an indoors image with only lightbulbs in it you might get a yellowish image. Photoshop has a fuction to redeem this. You can manually set the "white-point" and let Photoshop alter the image. You pick the white picker in the level window ie the rightmost one of these 3:



With that picker selected, you click a part of the image that is supposed to be pure bright white. Note that this is only possible if there acutally is something white in your photo.

But lets not get clogged down in the Levels window.

Now we have a brighter image in the right size. Now lets just make it a little more perky before we save it.



What we do is that we apply the simple Sharpen filter that is found under the menu "Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen". This filter is used in every image in print, and just about every image on the web. The same filter is usually also applied to TV features to get a sharper picture. What the filter actully does is to fool the eye that the contrast and edges are more distinct than the really are wich makes the eye belive the picture is sharper. If you do not see the difference from my two pictures here, try the filter in photoshop and undo it and redo it a few times, you will see the difference.



After this all we have to do is to save it. You can either use the "Save for Web" function to preview the saved file or simply "Save As".

Since this is a photograpy you will want to use JPG as a file format. GIF is only used for very small photos or for graphic elemets like buttons and smilies that have very few colors. When saving as JPG use medium (50%) to high (70%) for best results. Going above that will make the file size too big while going below will make the image look grainy due to fractal compression.

Now youre one step closer to publishing better quality images on the web, to show off your cases and components in all their wonderful glory.

This concludes my Tutorial. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask.

Happy Photoshopping!

Good work.....Everyone should take the time to read this BEFORE posting....

Nice post! I have worked in P'shop both personally and professionally and still learned something (about the droppers in the levels window).
I generally did this within the scanner's software at the print shop I used to work at but never had the occasion to use the dropper in the levels window.
That deserves rep.

Cool deal. I work in photoshop quite a bit. Have never really messed around with the levels before besides using auto level. Generally I mess with brightness and contrast, but I'll keep that and the sharp filter in mind, dont think I've ever used that, but then again I hardly ever am making pictures clear, but I will in the future.

nice tip

Great tutorial

Quote: Originally Posted by Digital-World Good work.....Everyone should take the time to read this BEFORE posting....

all valid points to say the world is upside down and backwards

The level tool is the most important one you cannot pass by when using a scanned image. Digital camera pictures usually does the "Auto" by itself, but you still may want nudge it up abit anyway.

There are a few other things you can do, especially about colors in "Hue/Saturation" window, and improve certain ranges in the image with "Curves". Also remeber that the more you do, the more raw-data is destroyed in the image. So by stream-lining the process of work, you usually get the most done. Thats only true if you want to keep an image realistic, if youre making a piece of artwork or a sig, you usually dont strive for photorealism

Maybe I can add something a little more in-depth later about the some of the other tools. Any specific things you want me to go into?

Yeah I've never really had to adjust a photo for clarity, but I can say that your original photo does look incredibly better, sharper, brighter after you jazzed it up a bit. Good work indeed