Photo Editing
General Global Image Enhancements
Most photographs benefit from a few subtle enhancements to give images greater depth and impact. Using photoshop these relatively simple changes can often take poor quality photographs and turn them into feature images, which can transform a website.
Photographs taken in different conditions and on different cameras can vary considerably and often benefit from numerous adjustments to suit a particular design and/or to sit well alongside each other.
These more basic adjustments are carried out on most images that I include in websites. JPEG file formats can be used, however, for best results Camera Raw files are preferred.
Correcting & Enhancing Skin Tone
Automated features on most cameras compensated for lighting and conditions by adjusting brightness and colourisation of images. The effect of these adjustments on skin tone can be quite significant and correction is often required to get photographs looking their best.
The following example starts with a good photograph taken with a SLR camera, but with a little work the image has greater depth, more impact and the skin has a healthier glow.
Creating Dramatic Images
More elaborate effects can also be created to better evoke an emotion or feeling within a photograph. In the following example, the original picture was taken in flat light on a misty day near Mt Snowden, Wales in sub zero temperatures.
The unadjusted image is not particularly engaging and does not convey the experience of the day very accurately. However, after quite a bit of work there is improved focus on the individual, the foreground has more impact and the void to the right has greater depth and presence.
I have also cooled the image quite considerably to better describe the day, although this is possibly a little too extreme for many applications.
Newsletter
