Cody JW » 15 Mar 2010 23:01 wrote:I am no expert on photos in caves but the program for my Olympus digital camera allows you do all kinds of touch ups to your photos,I was playing with it the other day and was amazed at what you can do.I do not know if that kind of thing relates to this situation or if other camera programs do this, I am assuming they do.I was able to change background or foreground color ect.
Good question Cody and instead for sending you on a websearch for photo editing tutorials, I’ll give a recent example. I’m not an expert either but I can share what I know.
Personally I think the software supplied by camera manufacturers are either too limited or resource hogs. There are several freeware available, some were listed a couple years ago in the "Photo Editing Software" thread, for editing photos and some even provide an album system to help you organize your photos in your computer or online. I’ll be using Goggle Picasa for this example.
First download and install Goggle Picasa. Then select a photo and go into the edit mode. In the first tab you are given many edit options of which I use a few in this example.
Original photo - EXIF data shows this photo was taken with a Panasonic DMC-FZ18 at ISO: 100, for 1/160s with f/4.2 and zoomed at the 35mm equivent of 803mm. The histogram shows the photo is on the dark side.
Crop your photo to get rid of distracting objects (like your caving buddy who was cutoff by the framing) and to get the composition you want.
Adjust levels with the one-click “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Now the histogram is spread throughout its range and towards the lighter side. If you want more control of the levels you can go to the Tuning tab.
Sharpen lightly, don’t overdo it. It’s like using salt, use just enough but don’t go overboard.
And just for fun I tried the Redeye option but undid it because it ruins the effect I wanted.
Try all the options, you can always undo them. Try going to the Effects tab for other creative options. I'll stress again, edit lightly, just a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper; an overly edited photo can have a negative effect on the viewer.
Finally save your work as a copy. Don’t replace the original photo because you may want to edit it differently in the future.
The final photo in this example was posted on OnlineCaver.com as “redeye reduction turned off.”
Edit lightly and click on!