Growing up I had always had a fascination with the black and white photographs of my family that stretched back to the turn of the century. I have always found black and white photography to be richer and classier, but I never knew how, in a world of Polaroid cameras and color photography, to take black and whites of my own. With the evolution of digital picture editing software, I now find creating perfect black and whites incredibly easy. With Microsoft PhotoShop or Picture It! I can simply open a color photo file, click on the effects options and choose the black and white option and just like that I have a beautiful black and white picture. With a slight adjustment of the contrast and brightness I can make a picture that looks just like the photos that fascinated me as a child.
Modern photo editing software has so many options designed to make sophisticated photo editing and alterations easy for anyone. Some basic editing functions are a simple matter, such as rotating a picture to landscape or portrait appearance and flipping a picture to its mirror image. Cutting the margins of a picture to focus on the principal content, a process called cropping is a simple matter of selecting and dragging a window over the area that will be the new picture. Adjusting brightness, color and contrast can make grainy or dark pictures much better for printing and viewing. It’s also possible to increase or decrease the resolution on a picture to soften or sharpen its appearance. Some color photos will tend to be dominated by one of the primary colors: red, blue or green. With color editing you can remove the excess color or add other colors to balance the appearance. These changes can be crucial to improving a picture’s quality for printing. With film photography such dark or blurry pictures would often be relegated to the scrap heap.
Photo software has an important advantage to traditional photo editing techniques. Since all of the editing is done on the computer, it is possible to simply undo any mistakes or save separate files for each edited copy of the original picture. There are other, more fanciful options for photo editing. You can make a really cool image just by selecting the negative option, which creates a photo negative. Further adjusting the colors and contrast can make such a picture appear very psychedelic. Modern photo software also has options to add borders around a picture or superimpose text or other objects into a picture. Through the use of these options, it’s also possible to create great photo collages. Other options allow you to create photo tile mosaics or stained glass effects.
Modern photo editing, combined with digital photography allows everyday people to be not only photographers, but also graphic design artists. When using this software, it’s important to experiment. Photo editing software is designed to be user friendly. As long as you keep a separate copy of treasured photographs, the most beautiful and satisfying finished product can always be obtained with a little trial and error.
