It's time for a bit of truth... unless you are VERY skilled in photography (and/or very lucky) it is rare for a perfect shot to come directly from the camera with little or no software processing needed. This rule applies to amateurs and pros alike. But the good news is that most images can be spiced up with a few simple clicks of the mouse.

It is beyond the scope of this tutorial (and my own expertise) to delve into all of the intricacies of photo editing, let alone attempt to cover the various software packages that are available. Most digital cameras come bundled with their own photo editing software. Check yours to see what, if anything, was included.

I personally use Nikon Capture NX2 and Photoshop. For those who don't want to mortgage the house there are several excellent free packages available. One I highly recommend is The GIMP, an open-source (free) image tool with lots of useful features. In this tutorial we'll use GIMP for demonstration purposes but your photo editing software will more than likely have similar functions and screens for each of the features discussed.

Before we dive into editing functionality we need to take a moment and discuss a few important points.

RESOLUTION, IMAGE SIZE, AND IMAGE QUALITY

You may recall that in the Basics section of this tutorial I recommended using the highest resolution available to you. (If not, re-read tip #8.) Your camera most likely has several "image quality" settings. These settings directly determine the image size and resolution of your images.

As with a television or computer monitor, a photographic image is nothing more than a grid of dots (or pixels as they are referred to in geek-speak). Higher resolutions contain more pixels across each row and down each column of this grid. Lower resolutions contain fewer pixels. Image quality and resolution are directly related. Higher resolution means better image quality.

What does this have to do with photo editing software?

You should always be aware of an editing function's impact on the resolution of your image. Cropping and resizing (as discussed on the next page) can have a negative impact on your resolution, and therefore, image quality. We'll cover this in more depth as we discuss each function but here's a quick example to illustrate the "Dark Side" of over-manipulating our images.

Let's take a shot using the camera's lowest resolution setting, zoom (or crop) in on the subject, and then enlarge it using the resize function thereby increasing the resolution of our cropped image. Here's our before and after shots:

     

Downright ugly, isn't it? This is an extreme example but you can see the effect these functions have on image quality when carried to the extreme. Notice the graininess and jagged edges in the second image? These are referred to as "artifacts" - a photo editor's worst sin (well, at least one of the top five). Aside from reverting to your original image there's not much you can do to save this puppy no matter how much photo editing magic you use.

Keep resolution in mind as you read the remainder of this section. We'll discuss the effect of editing functions on resolution where applicable.

PRESERVING ORIGINALS

One last important note before we dig into software features...

Always preserve your original images in their original state! Should I repeat that?

Before you begin editing an image you should always perform a "Save As" and make a copy using a different file name. The new image will then become your working copy. Never change an original! You never know when you may need to go back to it at a future time.

OK, enough of the preliminaries. It's time to dig in!