Thursday, March 04, 2010

How to Capture Picture Perfect Photos

This is a summary of the article from PCAuthority, Mar 2010.

1. Turn off flash for indoor photographs, otherwise the subject will look artificially bright. An alternative is to use a flash filters.
2. Turn on flash outdoors, so that the surrounding lights will not overwhelm the light on the subject.
3. Try out the scenes modes. Most modern digital cameras come with various pre-configured scene modes. Experiment with it a little to see which suits the conditions.
4. Edit the photo with software. The two highly recommended software which are free, are:
     - Paint.Net : http://www.getpaint.net/
     - GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/

The following combination of steps in photo editing helps improve most photos.
a) Levels and Curves
    GIMP: select Colours | Levels.  Adjust the Input Levels Histogram.
    Paint.Net: select Adjustment | Levels.
b) Color Adjustment
    GIMP: select Colours | Hue-Saturation. Adjust the Saturation to 10-20.
    Paint.Net: select Adjustment | Hue-Saturation.
c) Sharpening
    GIMP: select Filters | Enhance | Unsharp Mask. Try 0.1, 1.0, 0.0 for Radius, Amount and Threshold respectively.
    Paint.Net: select Effects | Photo | Sharpen.

There is a whole list of effects available in most editing software, but try the ones above first to make the photo look really good.


Added 20 Dec 2014

Photo editing tips for photos taken with bad lighting
1. Use Unsharp Mask or similar feature
2. Then choose Gamma Correction for either underexposure or overexposure
3. If there is no Gamma Correction, or no good results, choose Brightness/Contrast instead.
4. Color Balancing used to fix colors problems like skin tones.
5. To reduce pixelation, use Noise Filter - Edge Preserving Smooth
6. Then increase Saturation to restore vibrant colors.

No comments: