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Top 3 Digital Photography Programs I useAug 25 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photo-Paint for their power. Photo-Paint for many additional filters and effects. Irfanview for great portability, slide-show, and ability to open an amazing number of file formats.
Here are my 3 favorite graphics programs, and how I use them to improve digital photographs. They are: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint and Irfanview. Photoshop and Photo-Paint are actually very similar. They can do pretty much the same things, though their menus look somewhat different. I am a bit more familiar with Photoshop, but I often go to Corel Photo-Paint, because it offers many more filters and special effects than Photoshop does. Also Corel Photo-Paint has a greater variety of different brushes, free plug-ins, etc. Irfanview is a wonderfully compact image processing program, available for free downloading. The complete program (in it's compressed, Zip-ed, form) fits on a single floppy disk, with plenty of room to spare, since it is less than 1 MB in size. Irfanview can open an incredible number of different file formats, it can enhance the images, and it provides a very easy way to set up a slide-show. How do I use these programs? All 3 programs can open photos taken with a digital camera, or they can scan in photos from a scanner. Each raw photo usually needs a little enhancement. There are many ways to do that. Most people start by trying to play with the Brightness and Contrast controls, though this is not the best way. I started off, some years ago, by using the Brightness and Contrast controls. But these days I rarely use this, and would not recommend it in most cases. The Brightness, if increased, just washes out the whole image, which can then be somewhat corrected by increasing the contrast. A better way to adjust brightness/contrast is to adjust the LEVELS, where you can move the middle point without affecting the Black and White points. You can also bring in the Black and White points closer to the center, to leave out any unused areas on both sides. After that, you can also try the Auto-Contrast (on the Image/Adjust menu). Finally, sharpen the image, using the Unsharp filter. This usually gives quite good results. I used this for a couple of years as my main method. But, then I discovered the use of CURVES, which I now think is the absolute best way (in most cases) to improve an image. Yes, "Curves" sound a bit esoteric and complicated, especially when you notice that you can adjust curves separately for each channel (red, green, blue, as well as composite). But, there is a really simple way to use Curves in Photoshop. After selecting Curves from the Image/Adjust menu, simply click on the Auto adjustment. The photo will be instantly color corrected. If you don't notice much difference, it may be that the photo is already pretty well color balanced. A lot of my digital photos, especially indoors, and some of my scanned photos are a bit too "warm", too pinkish, ... a bit too much red. The Auto Curves corrects this with a single click. Like I said, I used to adjust all my photos by controlling the Levels, and then using the Auto Contrast. But, since I discovered the Curves adjustment, I noticed that there is usually no need to adjust anything else, except for sharpness. So, my usual procedure these days is to apply only two adjustments to each photo I take: First, make sure the Preview is turned on, so you can see the effects before applying them. 1. Use Image/Adjust/CURVES, and select Auto. 2. Use Filter/Sharpen/UNSHARP MASK. I generally apply the following: - amount of about 60 - 70, - radius of about 2.0 - 3.0. I noticed that this sometimes makes the skin on a person's face a little too grainy, so to counter that effect, I also apply a - threshold of about 2 or 3 (which softens the image). Actually, my scanned images usually require more sharpening than the photos taken with my digital camera (the Canon S40). But some sharpening is always recommended, especially if you resample the image, to make the image (and the whole file) larger or smaller. If I use manual controls in Curves, I usually just move the midpoint either slightly up or down, to lighten or darken the image. Alternatively, sometimes I apply a gentle "S" curve, by clicking on the mid-point to establish an anchor there and keep the mid-point unaffected while I slightly raise the 25% point and slightly lower the 75% point (or vice-versa), to create an overall S shape. It all depends on the photo and what I am trying to do to it. I always have the "Preview" turned on, so I can see the effects my changes will have. By the way, Corel Photo-Paint has very similar controls to those in Photoshop. Corel Photo-Paint comes bundled with Corel Draw, so you get two programs for the price of one: 1) Corel Draw itself (for vector images) and 2) Corel Photo-Paint (for bitmap images). Corel Photo-Paint includes several different curve presets for lightening or darkening images, or applying other effects. You can access these presets from within the Curves menu box, by clicking on the Open button and selecting from the preset options. You can also save your own favorite Curve, if you think you might be applying the same effect to a number of photos. Corel also comes with several different kinds of brushes, filters and effects, many more than Photoshop. One particular effect that I really like and use often is the Photo-Edges effect. It allows you to select from a variety of special effects applied to the edges of the photo, to make it gradually dissolve into the background. They can be smooth dissolves, or torn-edges, or effects that make it look like the whole photo was painted on the background with a series of bold strokes with a wide paint-brush. By the way, after applying the Photo-edges in Corel Photo-Paint, you can go back to Adobe Photoshop and open the image there for further processing. Corel can easily handle the Photoshop PSD format, and JPG and TIFF files (and a variety of other formats) can easily be opened in both programs. All these file formats can also be opened in Irfanview. Irfanview (pronounced:"Eerfan-view") is a very useful, small, portable, and free image processing program available for free download from www.irfanview.com. This program is great for setting up a slide-show, for batch processing, and for both reading and exporting to a large number of different image formats. The image improvement controls are not as refined as those in Photoshop or Photo-Paint, but they are quite adequate. In Irfanview, I would use mainly the following two controls, both in the Image menu: a) Enhance Colors (Shift+G). This gives you several sliders to play with. As above, I would recommend not touching the Brightness and Contrast Controls. Instead, move the Gamma slider. The default (neutral) value is 1.00. You can lighten or darken the image by sliding the Gamma up or down. I would suggest to use small adjustments, of no more than about 10 - 15 % in either direction. It depends on the photo, of course, but in most cases, don't go beyond the range of from 0.80 to 1.20 in the Gamma correction. b) Sharpen (Shift+S). This will sharpen the image. Unfortunately, there is no control over how much sharpening will be applied. You can try sharpening some more, by selecting Sharpen again, but generally only one sharpening step should be enough, or two sharpening steps only in extreme cases. Several repeated Sharpenings, one on top of the other, can yield an interesting "snowy" or "frosted glass" effect, totally distorting the image, but resulting in a rather cool effect. But, one of the areas where Irfanview really shines is in the ease with which it can be transported and set up for your firends to watch a slide show of your photos. For example, I recently took about 300 photos at a friend's wedding. I put all the photos on a CD-R disk, and also included a copy of Irfanview on the same disk (using Roxio's Easy CD Creator). That way, when I sent the CD-R disk to my friends, they could simply use Irfanview to watch a slide show of all the 300 images. The beauty of Irfanview is that it is not only small in size, but it is also very simple in its construction. It does not rely on any special Registry settings. This makes it very easily portable. All you need to do is copy the complete Irfanview folder from your hard disk to your CD-R or Zip disk, and the program will work directly from the CD-R or the Zip disk. You don't need any special installation procedure! I wish all programs were this simple!  |
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by texas-swede
