9.4 PHOTO-EDITING SOFTWARE

Learn To Draw

Learn To Paint

Photoshop Elements

Animation Menu

Art Principles

Art Appreciation

Photo editing software ranges from easy to use, one-click corrections, to the powerful and complicated Photoshop. Where you want to place yourself along this spectrum depends a lot on how serious you are and what you want to accomplish. For example, if all you want to do is prepare images to post on the Web, a shareware program such as Paint Shop Pro will more than suffice. However, if you plan on having your images printed on a color press or included in a professional produced publication, the Photoshop is the way to go. If your like me, and money is hard to find consider PhotoShop Elements, it is a "Lite" version of Photoshop and is around $50 instead of over $500.

Some programs such as G&A Imaging's PhotoRecall are easy to use because they show you a spectrum of changes and let you pick the one you like best. Here are nine images with different levels of brightness to choose from.

Since one of the most interesting things to do with digital images is to manipulate them, be sure to look into filters. Many of this like the unsharp filter are used to make your images look more like the original scene. But many others can make photos looks like paintings, stained glass windows, or hundreds of other objects. The can emboss images, add textures, twist and twirl them, and create all kinds of creative havoc. They are easy to use, you just select the command and sit back and watch your computer go to work. If you don't like the result, just click the undo command and try another filter. And don't stop with just one filter, use two or more in succession on the same image and watch as it moves further and further from reality. Many photo editing programs come with filters built-in, but some programs allow to to purchase separate plug-ins to expand your library of effects from which to choose.