Phun With Digital Photos

Hi everybody,

I'm in the middle of downloading and
processing a

bunch of digital photos from various weekend festivities/activities,
so

I thought I'd share a few image resources I've collected recently (I

think a few were Digg
links, but I'm not sure which ones):

First
off, this one is just a neat trick my friend Paul
showed me. If you take an indoor closeup,

especially in a dark place (I'm told that this is a common situation
in

bars), the flash can have a pretty harsh result on your subject (not
to

mention it's annoying to everyone else).

You can
avoid this and get a cool effect simply by putting your finger
over the flash. Your finger acts as a filter, which gives
everything a reddish haze.

I'm not sure if different
skin tones or finger thicknesses affects the
effect.

While we're on the subject, here's a
discussion of more filter
hacks on Flickr.

*
Top
10 Tips for Great Pictures
There are a lot
of lists of photo tips around; this one is from Kodak, and it's pretty good;
simple stuff (like using the rule
of thirds), but well-illustrated with examples of how photos
can be improved.

* 8 Basic Steps of Image
Editing
I found this in the Maine Media-Arts Project blog

-- it's a quick guide to editing your images, including the order you

should do things to get the best results. It's Photoshop-centric, but

you can find the same basic features in most photo editing
programs.

Now, when it comes to photo editing, I am
fortunate enough to have Adobe
Photoshop,

which is pretty much the standard -- so much so that "photoshop" is

essentially a generic term for digitally editing a photo (including
the

ever-popular "putting people's heads on other people's
bodies.")

If

you don't have Photoshop, there are still plenty of options for
editing

photos. Most scanners and digital cameras include some form of photo

editing software -- it may be a stripped-down version of Photoshop or

something else; they're typically geared to basic cropping and
editing,

as well as doing stuff like removing the dreaded
redeye.

If you're interested in more
powerful image manipulation tools, here are some free
alternatives (Please note: I haven't personally tried all of
them, so your mileage may vary. But you can't beat the
price.)

* GIMP
GIMP
is a Photoshop alternative, described thusly:

"GIMP

is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed
piece

of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and

image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many
languages."

If you're interested in the history of
the GIMP project, check out the Wikipedia entry.
If you just want to download the installer, here's the Mac OSX and Windows XP

versions (Make sure you download the executable installer -- you're

probably not interested in the source code. Also, be sure to read all

the instructions
and known issues first.)

* Paint.NET
Paint.NET
was originally developed at Washington State University,

as a replacement for Microsoft Paint (so the interface is meant to be

familiar to anyone who's used Paint.) It's available for Windows-only.
I've downloaded it, and am just starting to play with
it.

(As an aside, you may be asking, how can these
programs be free? I should probably do an entry about free
software and the open-source movement, but
that's something for another time. In the meantime, if you're
interested, you can read about the GNU Project and the Free Software
Foundation.)

Finally,

if you're interested in seeing just how much the photos you see in

magazines and other media are retouched, airbrushed, or otherwise

digitally enhanced, check out Greg's
Digital Retouching Portfolio,

which has somegreat befores and afters (just rollover with your

mouse).  It's pretty enlightening and/or appalling. 
Also,

that's why I was looking at pictures of bikini
models, honest.

If

you've got any other photo resources you want to share, or you want to

show me your own finger over the flash experiments, post a link in the

comments.

That's it for now, talk to you later (snow
in the forecast tomorrow, oh fun). Thanks -- Joe

Tags: photo editing programs, photo tips, paint.net, gimp, free photo software