- Editing your photos
- Using special effect filters
- Preparing your photos for e-mail and the Web
Using special effect filters
So far, we've covered the essentials of photo editing: cropping, contrast, sharpening, and colour balance.
Most image editing programs also offer you a variety of "filters" you can use to distort or modify your photos in fun and exciting ways. Some filters will make your image appear to be an oil or water-colour painting. Another will make it appear to be an old sepia-toned black and white photo. A wide variety of eye-catching lighting effects are also available.
Using these filters are certainly not necessary, but it can be a lot of fun trying them out.
Most current graphic editing programs let you select a portion (or all) of your photograph and resize it, distort it, and apply effects it, while leaving the rest of the image untouched. Also, depending on the program you're using, you can copy a portion of the photograph to the clipboard and then paste it into a new "layer" so that you can restrict the effects of the filter to a specific layer and leave the rest of the photo unchanged.
When you paste a selection into another image, or even into the same image, you can specify how opaquely the overlapping layers, or objects, will combine. When you paste in a new layer into a graphic editing program, you'll see a dropdown menu called Merge, or Blend Mode. This dropdown menu will have options such as Add (meaning, add the two colours together), Multiply, Saturation, Texturize, etc. Each option will apply a unique mathematical formula to determine how the image layers interact with each other colour-wise.
You can have a lot of fun with these tools, but remember: a little filtering goes a long way.
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