Photography’s Digital Possibilities - Three Things to Get You Started

With the introduction of digital photography and image editing software, a floodgate of new possibilities have opened up for creative photographers. Today, photographers who aren’t using image editing software are simply limiting their creative possibilities and missing out on a wealth of option to get ahead in the highly competitive marketplace. Using software for image enhancement is as important as using a good camera and lens. One of the many excellent image editing programs is Adobe’s Photoshop. That’s the program I’m using and it’s the basis of this tutorial. Similar functions can be found in most other image editing programs.

Photoshop have become the modern day darkroom -- but without the chemicals and long waiting times associated with the classical darkrooms. You can choose to do small image enhancements or to apply special effects that will alter the image completely, all in a matter of seconds. It is up to you how much you want to change, but being a photojournalist and documentary photographer myself, I feel it’s my duty to remain true to my photographic subjects. So what I mostly do is the small, but powerful enhancements with the methods mentioned here. For the beginner I’ll advice to use these effects sparingly. Don’t overdo it. Often, less is more. And always use a copy of the original camera file to work on. If you later regret your changes, it’s not always possible to undo them, so always keep your original photo separate.

With that out of the way, here’s the three Photoshop tools I use all the time:

Curves (On main menu, select Image > Adjustments > Curves)

Sets the contrast and tonal range of your image. While there are other, easier options for changing the contrast, this one is by far the most powerful option. It can be a little tricky to get the hang of in the beginning, but it’s worth the effort learning. Simply click anywhere on the curve and drag it up or down. You can set almost as many points as you like, but usually 1 to 3 points is enough. What it does is it makes the dark, midtones and highlights either darker or lighter. Usually you’ll want to make sure that the darkest part of your image is black and the lightest parts are white. This will make your image ‘pop out’ and appear ‘strong’, sharp and rich in colour. It is also useful for enhancing the tonal details. The more steep you make the curve, the richer details you’ll get. If your photo already fills out the tonal range from black to white, it’s not possible to enhance, say, the shadow details without pushing the lighter areas into complete white. This is typical for a photo taken in mid-day sunshine with harsh shadows. But if you have a more tonal flat photo, where there’s not big difference between the darkest and lightest areas, typical for the kind of photo you take on an overcast or even misty day, you can produce great tonal details across the photo.

Unsharpen Mask (On main menu, select Filter > Sharpen > Unsharpen Mask)

This simple little tool with the confusing name is a must for digital photography. It’s used to make the image appear sharp in the final process of your editing. It’s not a magic tool to make fuzzy pictures sharper than ever, just to give that final touch of sharpness. Some camera’s apply an unsharpen mask to the pictures automatically, before they leave the camera. This makes it easy, but for the best image quality try and turn it off on your camera, instead sharpening manually in Photoshop. Only use it in the very end of your editing process, especially after you have resized your image for putting it online or printing it out. There’s 3 settings in this tool, typically you’d want to use a Radius of 0.5 to 1 pixel, an Amount of 50 to 100% and a Threshold of 0. Use it as little as needed, since it has a side effect of adding a bit of noise to your image.

Saturation (On main menu, select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation)

With the saturation slider, you can change the strength of your colours. A simple way to turn a colour photo into a black-and-white photo is to set the saturation to zero. There’s other and better ways to do that, that I will expand on in another article. To enhance the colour, bump it up to 120% or so. Again, don’t overdo it. Sometimes, more subdued colours can give a really nice, moody look to your photos. One of my favourite small tricks: Try combining de-saturated colours, say -70%, with an extremely strong contrast (set with curves). It gives a really nice, slightly metallic look. Try it out! In Photoshop, it’s most easily done with adjustment layers, since you can fine-tune your adjustments again and again until you have exactly the effect you want.