Three Secrets for Better Digital Photographs

Smarter cameras and advanced technology yield better images than a 1-hour photo shop used to create. But why stop there? A few simple editing tricks will improve almost any shot. Here are three of my favorites.

Fix the Color Balance

Your camera measures the light each time it snaps a picture, setting the color balance so all colors in a scene look accurate. If photos seem too blue or too red, your white balance may be out of whack.
One way to obtain accurate colors is to set the white balance by hand before taking the shot. Check the camera’s manual for instructions on accessing its white balance control. Dial in a setting designed for your conditions (such as daylight or indoors).
Another option is to tweak the colors afterward through an image editing program. In Photoshop Elements, for example, click the Quick Fix tab and drag the Temperature slider until colors look right (see the screen shot above).

Correct the Exposure
Even pros underexpose or overexpose a shot occasionally. You can improve most photos by using the Levels or Histogram control in your photo editor. In Photoshop Elements, open the image and choose Enhance•Adjust Lighting•Levels.
You’ll see a graph (called a “histogram”) that shows the distribution of bright and dark pixels in your photo. If lots of pixels are crowded against the right side of the graph, the image is probably overexposed. Conversely, a concentration of pixels on the far left of the graph may indicate underexposure. To lighten the whole photograph, drag the White Point on the right side of the graph to the left; to darken the photo, drag the Black Point on the left side to the right. To adjust only the midtones in the photo, drag the middle arrow to the left or right.

Straighten Verticals

Have you ever seen a photo of a tall building that looks as though it’s ready to fall over? That effect is called “perspective distortion,” and photography pros use expensive hardware to avoid it. The rest of us can use a little digital trickery instead.
In Photoshop Elements, you can reduce the intensity of the distortion by choosing Filter•Correct Camera Distortion. Adjust the Vertical Perspective setting to reduce the perspective distortion. (You must crop the photo to eliminate the tapered bottom.) Many people prefer to use a Photoshop plug-in filter designed for perspective correction, such as Andromeda Software’s LensDoc. The program corrects various lens-distortion effects, and it can make the architecture in your shots appear as straight and true as the Tower of Pisa (when construction of the building began in 1173).