Playing With Photographs

Ahh! Photographs. Who doesn’t have a shoe box in a closet full of those wonderful memories captured for posterity on film. They may be black and white, Polaroid’s or even a professionally made portrait. Regardless of their origins you can restore, enhance or remake them. The internet abounds with free editors nowadays. A Google search for “free graphic editor” will give you several truly impressive programs to choose from and they’re FREE! Of Course, PhotoShop and Illustrator are still the MacDaddies but, they come with a hefty price tag and a steep learning curve. Paint Shop Pro is also a fine editor for a quite a bit less money than PS. So, If you have PS or PSP and know how to use it, you’re good to go. If you don’t, try out some of the free ones. Be sure to look for one that use layers and learn how to use this function well. The ability to stack layers on top of one another, in my humble opinion, is one of the most important functions in a graphics editor.

Ok, you have your editor and your photographs. Now what? Well you have to get the photo’s from your shoe box, onto the computer and into the graphic program. A flat bed scanner is your best bet and you can pick one up fairly reasonably nowadays.

TIP: Check out the preferences or settings on your scanner and set the dpi for 180 to 300. This will give you a nice large picture to work with and it prints real nice too.

Another method that is ignored by many is the digital camera. That’s right, just take a picture of a picture. If you have a digital camera of 5 mega pixels or more, especially if it has a macro function, you’re good to go.

TIP: Don’t use the flash for this. Natural light on an overcast day give the best results. Don’t use indoor lighting because you’ll have a color cast in the resulting digital image. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different settings on your camera.

Once you have your photograph on your computer it’s time to open your graphic program and get on with it. Again, if you have the cash I highly recommend Photoshop CS or Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9. Open your photo in your editor. I suggest that you save the photo to a separate file and rename it keeping the original by using the save as function. Be sure to save it in a format that supports layers. The next step is to enhance the photo. Two tools I use are the “levels” and “curves”. If your editor doesn’t have these you can start out by adjusting the contrast. Experiment! Try out all of your editors tools and filters and see what happens. If you’ve saved your original under a different name, you can always open it up and start again if something goes wrong. Use the help file and do a Google search for tutorials for your editor and find out how to use the levels function. Once you’ve done this you can really start to open up your creative potential. Check out the photo below, "Lord and Lady". This image is made up of nearly a dozen photographs stacked and blended using layers, among other things. I took several photos at a local Festival. I then put my and my wife’s heads on the couple in the foreground. Then I added people from other photographs until I had a crowd. Well, that’s all for now. More later.

By: Wyman Goodnight