Cropping And Retouching Your Images For Better Quality
Imagine you are having a birthday party for your four-year-old daughter; it’s one of her biggest parties yet. You decide you want to snap a photo of her and her little friends together to cement the occasion for all time.
The setting is perfect, the sun is getting ready to set, the poise is unforgettable and the memory is already stored in your mind for the remainder of your days. Unfortunately, things were not as they seemed upon review of this momentous photograph. You spot your brother walking right into this otherwise perfect picture from the sideline, if it were not for him this would be the best photograph you had have ever taken.
At this point you want to try to snap a new photo the same way but it’s just not working, everything that made it special is now lost, you are ready to delete the image from your camera thus removing what could have been a picture-perfect memory. But wait! Hope is not lost, the image can be salvaged. “How?” you might ask. Simple cropping of the frame can be completed to retain your arts blissful details.
Step 1:
When you begin the retouching process, you will need to choose what specific part of the photograph you wish to keep in the reedited product. Realign the focus so you do not see any background distractions that would otherwise knock the perspective off course. Cut your brother from the equation.
Step 2:
Cut around the image appropriately, removing all potential ailments that could mar the photo, if not make it look incomplete. Space out the focus of the photograph from the frame to give it a look of elegance, show that it is YOUR art. If the frame and the subject of the photo are too close then the viewer might miss something or the view might be cut-off from the focus. You don’t want your viewer to be looking at the wrong subject because if they believe your brother is the focus than you’ve made a really big boo-boo.
Adobe Photoshop toolbar
Step 3:
Cropping is easy, or is it? Sure you can keep things simple and apply the basic settings to any piece but the true photographer will want to go above and beyond any and all simplicities. Before you expose the frame placing it in a different alignment could give to better results while at the same time you can wait until after exposure and change how the boarders of the picture are set. Of course these are only the tip of the iceberg.
With a clean sheet on your program apply the Clone Stamp tool and make sure it’s on the proper settings, in this case Current and Below. Now any retouching you do can be altered at any point in time whether you make the remaining alterations today or next month. Keep a firm hold on the Alt key as you attain more information to copy and then paste onto a specific location on the image. Keep this up until you make it to your goal. Cloning doesn’t need to be image specific you may also use this tool to move any bit of information to another completely different image.
Adobe Photoshop toolbar
More handy tools are the Healing brush and the Patch tool. These tools can be used to automatically copy information instead of having to do it all manually. Make sure the layer is genuinely opaque so the retouching can be done exceptionally well. Click on the desired layer and choose “Duplicate Layer” from the menu or palette.
Simple Copying and pasting can be done as well, you may choose whatever portion of the image you want with the aforementioned selection tools and go up to the edit menu and select copy and then choose the location and simply press CTRL + V to paste it onto the correct workload you want.
Step 4-The End!
Try your best not to ruin the sanctity of the image by attempting lens correction or panoramic stitching as this will most likely screw the image up and make it utterly in-viewable to the naked eye. If you make those kinds of mistakes it will only add more work to your part in hopes of trying to fix the problem and odds are you’ll only make it worse if you try to fix it. BUT if you do make this mistake a simple rectification would be to lessen the amount of contraction to the frame in which case you should retouch the image as opposed to cropping, it’ll work much better.
Whatever choices you make when it comes down to your images depends on you and solely you but whatever strategy you may use, ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR BROTHER IS OUT OF THE PICTURE!
