Free Photoshop Tips Cropping, and Fixing Skewed Artwork Photos

I hear/see about artwork photos that artists take themselves is, 'The color's not right'. So in later tips, I will give several instructions on how to correct this issue with Photoshop.

For today, however, I'm going to start where I usually start myself, which is to crop and straighten (or un-skew) the raw photographic image. I've seen enough uncropped, skewed images to know that not everyone knows how to do this simple fix.



Crop and Straighten

Open your original photo document. Always start with a good size photo; a .JPG that is 300 dpi and about 10" x 7" (to check the size of your photo from the toolbar, click Image/Image size).
I like to make a layer copy of the original: Ctrl+A (select all), then Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl + V (paste); and then save it as a .PSD. More information is saved in a PSD file. When the photo is completely edited you can save it as .JPG.
Setting up guidelines: Click Ctrl+R. This will bring up the rulers on the top and left of your document (to hide the rulers, use the same command). To make a straight guide line, place your mouse on on of the rules, then hold down the key on your mouse and pull down or to the right. Put the guidelines close to the outer edge of your painting as it appears in the photo.

To crop your photo, choose the crop tool from the side tool kit. Drag the crop into position, and then click enter.

To straighten and align your artwork: click Ctrl + A (select all), then Ctrl + T (transform). Right click on the image and choose 'skew'.This will allow you to pull each corner outwards to correct the alignment of the image. If your image has internal 90 degree lines, as this sample does, you can add additional guidelines to help you. When it's adjusted to your satisfaction, click Enter.

Alternately, if you image does not appears skewed but is merely rotated a bit off, you could use the Rotate function (also under Transform).

To remove the guidelines, go to your top toolbar and click View/Clear Guides. Your image is now ready for color correction.

Free Basic Tips for Photographing Art for the Technically Challenged

Digital cameras have been a revolution, and revelation for artists in particular. I'm sure you remember the film days; pay for film, and for processing, waiting sometimes days to get your slides back...and then crossing your finges, hoping, hoping, that the exposures were good, that the camera was in focus... that the lab didn't lose your film right before the big art show entry was due... (happens)!

There are times you will want and need to take your work to a professional photo studio. I trust you'll figure out those times. For the Daily Painter, though, who wishes to post a photo a day, there's nothing faster and more cost effective than taking your own. I've been shooting photos since my teens but I still consider my style 'point and shoot'. A true professional photographer would be appalled by my lack of camera knowledge. Still, after decades of hining my 'non-method', I may have some useful tips for the non technical among you-- and you know who you are!

Getting the most of out of your 'raw' photos

* Photoshop can work wonders on many photos, but the better your original image is, the less editing, headaches and better final results you'll have.

* Unless you have the luxury of professional photo lights set up somewhere in your studio, you'll probably get the best photos outdoors. You'll have to do some experimenting to find what works best for you, and it may vary somewhat by each painting.

* If you're shooting watercolors, drawings, pastels, etc.: Photograph before framing with glass! You will save yourself so many headaches.

* Try photographing in a variety of light settings; I'm fond of middle of day (that is, around 10 a.m. and again around 2 p.m.) 'bright shade'-- to minimize glare and 'hot spots' from brush strokes.

* Try angling the painting into, and conversely, away from the sun; see which works the best to reduce glare. You might also experiment with the positioning of the canvas; lay it face up on a table or on the ground, hang it on a wall, or at an angle leaning on something-- all will provide somewhat different results-- and the background gets cropped in the end anyway.

* Do try and square the edges of the painting in your viewfinder to minimize straightening issues in the editing phase. Take at least a half dozen images of any artwork and choose the best one to begin editing. Remember, there's no film to waste here-- go crazy.

* Check the manual on your digital camera for ideas; while I'm not one to read cover to cover, there is always useful information that can be located through the index. If you are fortunate enough to have a camera with some built in settings*, try several of them on any single artwork and see which has the best look. *(mine has built color settings for Portrait, Landscape, a combo of the first two, Macro (close-up), Museum (very handy if you must shoot indoors), and a number of others.) Over time you'll discover which setting works best for your kind of artwork.

* If you have a new camera or haven't experimented much with it, try shooting at every 'preset' it has. You might be surprised at what variety you'll get, and the perfect camera setting for you may be lurking somewhere in the presets.

* Once you've gotten a good starting photo, check back to these tips for easy ways to make your photo the best it can be with Photoshop. A good photo WILL help you sell your art.

Adobe Photoshop:Image editor features-2

Perspective correction and distortion
Some image editors allow the user to distort (or "transform") the shape of an image. While this might also be useful for special effects, it is the preferred method of correcting the typical perspective distortion which results from photographs being taken at an oblique angle to a rectilinear subject. Care is needed while performing this task, as the image is reprocessed using interpolation of adjacent pixels, which may reduce overall image definition. The effect mimics the use of a perspective correction lens, which achieves a similar correction in-camera without loss of definition.

Lens correction
Photo manipulation packages have functions to correct images for various lens distortions including pincushion, fisheye and barrel distortions. The corrections are in most cases subtle, but can improve the appearance of some photographs.

Sharpening and softening images
Graphics programs can be used to both sharpen and blur images in a number of ways, such as unsharp masking or deconvolution.[1] Portraits often appear more pleasing when selectively softened (particularly the skin and the background) to better make the subject stand out. This can be achieved with a camera by using a large aperture, or in the image editor by making a selection and then blurring it. Edge enhancement is an extremely common technique used to make images appear sharper, although purists frown on the result as appearing unnatural.

Selecting and merging of images
Many graphics applications are capable of merging one or more individual images into a single file. The orientation and placement of each image can be controlled. The two images shown here were once individual studio portraits.

When selecting a raster image that is not rectangular, it requires separating the edges from the background, also known as silhouetting. This is the digital version of cutting out the image. Clipping paths may be used to add silhouetted images to vector graphics or page layout files that retain vector data. Alpha compositing, allows for soft translucent edges when selecting images. There are a number of ways to silhouette an image with soft edges including selecting the image or its background by sampling similar colors, selecting the edges by raster tracing, or converting a clipping path to a raster selection. Once the image is selected, it may be copied and pasted into another section of the same file, or into a separate file. The selection may also be saved in what is known as an alpha channel.

A popular way to create a composite image like this one is to use transparent layers. In this case, the "background image" shown at left was placed as the bottom layer. The layer marked "Original Image" at left was then added as a second layer in a multi-layer document. Using an image layer mask, all but the girl are hidden from the layer, giving the impression that she has been added to the background layer. Performing a merge in this manner preserves all of the pixel data on both layers to more easily enable future changes (such as adding the second individual) in the new merged image.

Slicing of images
A more recent tool in digital image editing software is the image slicer. Parts of images for graphical user interfaces or web pages are easily sliced, labeled and saved separately from whole images so the parts can be handled individually by the display medium. This is useful to allow dynamic swapping via interactivity or animating parts of an image in the final presentation.

Special effects
An example of some special effects that can be added to a picture.


Image editors usually have a list of special effects that can create unusual results. Images may be skewed and distorted in various ways. Scores of special effects can be applied to an image which include various forms of distortion, artistic effects, geometric transforms and texture effects,or combinations thereof.

Change color depth
It is possible, using software, to change the color depth of images. Common color depths are 2, 4, 16, 256, 65.5 thousand and 16.7 million colors. The JPEG and PNG image formats are capable of storing 16.7 million colors (equal to 256 luminance values per color channel). In addition, grayscale images of 8 bits or less can be created, usually via conversion and down-sampling from a full color image.

Contrast change and brightening
Image editors have provisions to change the contrast of images and brighten or darken the image. Underexposed images can often be improved by using this feature. Recent advances have allowed more intelligent exposure correction whereby only pixels below a particular luminosity threshold are brightened, thereby brightening underexposed shadows without affecting the rest of the image.

Color adjustments
The color of images can be altered in a variety of ways. Colors can be faded in and out, and tones can be changed using curves or other tools. The color balance can be improved, which is important if the picture was shot indoors with daylight film, or shot on a camera with the white balance incorrectly set. Special effects, like sepia and grayscale can be added to a image. In addition, more complicated procedures such as the mixing of color channels are possible using more advanced graphics editors.

The red-eye effect, which occurs when flash photos are taken when the pupil is too widely open (so that light from the flash that passes into the eye through the pupil reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball), can also be eliminated at this stage.

Printing
Controlling the print size and quality of digital images requires an understanding of the pixels-per-inch (ppi) variable that is stored in the image file and sometimes used to control the size of the printed image. Within the Image Size dialog (as it is called in Photoshop), the image editor allows the user to manipulate both pixel dimensions and the size of the image on the printed document. These parameters work together to produce a printed image of the desired size and quality. Pixels per inch of the image, pixel per inch of the computer monitor, and dots per inch on the printed document are related, but in use are very different. The Image Size dialog can be used as an image calculator of sorts. For example, a 1600 x 1200 image with a ppi of 200 will produce a printed image of 8 x 6 inches. The same image with a ppi of 400 will produce a printed image of 4 x 3 inches. Change the ppi to 800, and the same image now prints out at 2 x 1.5 inches. All three printed images contain the same data (1600 x 1200 pixels) but the pixels are closer together on the smaller prints, so the smaller images will potentially look sharp when the larger ones do not. The quality of the image will also depend on the capability of the printer.

Adobe Photoshop:Image editor features-1

Listed below are some of the most used capabilities of the better graphic manipulation programs. The list is by no means all inclusive. There are a myriad of choices associated with the application of most of these features.

Selection
One of the prerequisites for many of the applications mentioned below is a method of selecting part of an image, thus applying a change selectively without affecting the entire picture. Most graphics programs have several means of accomplishing this, such as a marquee tool, lasso, vector-based pen tools as well as more advanced facilities such as edge detection, masking, alpha compositing, and color and channel-based extraction.

Layers
Another feature common to many graphics applications is that of Layers, which are analogous to sheets of transparent acetate (each containing separate elements that make up a combined picture), stacked on top of each other, each capable of being individually positioned, altered and blended with the layers below, without affecting any of the elements on the other layers. This is a fundamental workflow which has become the norm for the majority of programs on the market today, and enables maximum flexibility for the user while maintaining non-destructive editing principles and ease of use.

Image size alteration
Image editors can resize images in a process often called image scaling, making them larger, or smaller. High image resolution cameras can produce large images which are often reduced in size for Internet use. Image editor programs use a mathematical process called resampling to calculate new pixel values whose spacing is larger or smaller than the original pixel values. Images for Internet use are kept small, say 640 x 480 pixels which would equal 0.3 megapixels.

Cropping an image
Digital editors are used to crop images. Cropping creates a new image by selecting a desired rectangular portion from the image being cropped. The unwanted part of the image is discarded. Image cropping does not reduce the resolution of the area cropped. Best results are obtained when the original image has a high resolution. A primary reason for cropping is to improve the image composition in the new image.

Histogram
Image editors have provisions to create an image histogram of the image being edited. The histogram plots the number of pixels in the image (vertical axis) with a particular brightness value (horizontal axis). Algorithms in the digital editor allow the user to visually adjust the brightness value of each pixel and to dynamically display the results as adjustments are made. Improvements in picture brightness and contrast can thus be obtained.

Noise removal
Image editors may feature a number of algorithms which can add or remove noise in an image. JPEG artifacts can be removed; dust and scratches can be removed and an image can be de-speckled. Noise removal merely estimates the state of the scene without the noise and is not a substitute for obtaining a "cleaner" image. Excessive noise reduction leads to a loss of detail, and its application is hence subject to a trade-off between the undesirability of the noise itself and that of the reduction artifacts.

Noise tends to invade images when pictures are taken in low light settings. A new picture can be given an 'antiquated' effect by adding uniform monochrome noise.

Removal of unwanted elements
Most image editors can be used to remove unwanted branches, etc, using a "clone" tool. Removing these distracting elements draws focus to the subject, improving overall composition.

Selective color change
Some image editors have color swapping abilities to selectively change the color of specific items in an image, given that the selected items are within a specific color range.

Adobe Photoshop:Digital data compression

Many image file formats use data compression to reduce file size and save storage space. Digital compression of images may take place in the camera, or can be done in the computer with the image editor. When images are stored in JPEG format, compression has already taken place. Both cameras and computer programs allow the user to set the level of compression.

Some compression algorithms, such as those used in PNG file format, are lossless, which means no information is lost when the file is saved. The JPEG file format uses a lossy compression algorithm- The greater the compression, the more information is lost, ultimately reducing image quality or detail. JPEG uses knowledge of the way the brain and eyes perceive color to make this loss of detail less noticeable.

Adobe Photoshop:Editing programs

Due to the popularity of digital cameras, image editing programs are readily available. Minimal programs, that perform such operations as rotating and cropping are often provided within the digital camera itself, while others are returned to the user on a compact disc (CD) when images are processed at a discount store. The more powerful programs contain functionality to perform a large variety of advanced image manipulations. Popular raster-based digital image editors include Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Corel Photo-Paint, Paint Shop Pro and Paint.NET. For more, see: List of raster graphics editors.

Adobe Photoshop:Basics of image editing

Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs, or editing illustrations with any traditional art medium. Graphic software programs, which can be broadly grouped into vector graphics editors, raster graphics editors, and 3d modelers, are the primary tools with which a user may manipulate, enhance, and transform images. Many image editing programs are also used to render or create computer art from scratch.