Another Free Photo Editing Program, Plus More Photo Editing Tips

When he's not busy helping to launch new sports blogging networks, blogger Jamie (over at Mr. Irrelevant) passed along a tip on another free photo editing program you can try.

It's for Windows users; it does most of your basic photo editing things (cropping, resizing, color correction, redeye reduction, etc.), and of course, it's free (requires a valid e-mail address to activate): PhotoPlus 6

I just downloaded and installed it (19 MB) -- it seems pretty robust. (Did I say it's free?) I will have to play with it some more, but you can try it out and add it to the roster of other free photo editing programs that I've blogged about: Irfanview and Paint.net and GIMP.

Also, I wanted to show you some of the things I do when I have to edit a photo for my blog or the Journals main page.

Now, I just do very basic photo treatments, and try to keep a very light touch. I'm not a photojournalist, but I still don't want to alter reality -- just make sure that it's accurately reflected on-screen.

For example, outside of straight cropping and resizing, if a photo is overexposed or underexposed, or is clearly color-shifted, I can adjust it so the elements of the photo show up more clearly.

However, at some point, you have to make a judgement call: Did lightening the photo change your hair color? Is this person naturally that ruddy, or did the flash make them look more red? Which is why you can't go too crazy with messing with photos -- it opens too many questions.

Here's an example, using myself. This is the original photo --actually, since the original photo straight off my camera was 1600x1200 (which is pretty huge), I cropped it down to a basic, square headshot, and resized it down to 200x200:

For this photo I didn't use a flash, since direct flash lighting can be pretty harsh, especially for close shots. As a result, this photo is kind of dark. In fact, you can't see my hair at all, since I'm in front of a dark background.

Since I use Photoshop, I can use the great Shadow/Highlight adjustment tool, which is a one-step tool to lighten dark areas and darken light areas. If you don't have Photoshop, you can adjust Levels, as well as Brightness/Contrast, to get similar effects. (I also tweaked the contrast a bit):

Again, I'm just a hack photo editor, so that's pretty much all I'm going to do except adjust the color a bit (fluorescent lights tend to make things look greenish, so I took a little green out and added some red. Similarly, using a flash can make things look more red/orange than they really are):

Oh, and as a last step: When you resize photos to make them smaller, a lot of times you lose detail (things get fuzzier or blurrier), so I used the Sharpen tool to sharpen things up a bit.

I made an animated gif to show the differences between the three photos:

Now, if I were so inclined (that is, really vain), I could make a lot of other adjustments to the photo to make myself look better. Offhand, they include:

* Using the airbrush to take some of the shine off my forehead.
* Using the clone tool to get rid of some stray hairs.
* Making the whites of my eyes whiter.
* Reducing the bags under my eyes.

And I'm not even a professional photo retoucher -- those people can go absolutely nuts -- check out this portfolio of what a professional can do (roll over the pictures with your mouse to compare the befores and afters).

If you don't have Photoshop or a similar photo editing tool, there are still options: a News.com item today talks about digital cameras that can retouch photos for you -- they can make you look thinner by stretching out the photo, or hide wrinkles and blemishes with soft focus, or make colors in landscapes pop more (see the article's gallery -- it's very instructive).

But let's say I wanted to push the limits of what I could do to retouch my photo. I'm not particularly skilled, but after a variety of adjustment layers, airbrushing and  prodigious use of the clone tool, here's what I came up with:

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: photoplus, photo editing, free photo software, photo tips