This lesson will focus on the "digital darkroom," or image editing program you use on your computer after shooting with your digicam. There are zillions of these programs out there and one usually comes with your camera or scanner: Kodak Picture Easy, Adobe Photo Deluxe, Paper Port, I-Photo are just a few of them.

All these programs do the same thing - manipulate the "dots" that make up each image. Each will have its own buttons and ways of doing things, but they all will address the common functions you need to turn digital files into digital photos. These are the basics you need to master first!

Crop and Proportion

Brightness-Contrast

Color

Compression and File Type

1) Crop - Your camera sees a rectangle of area and saves the same shape image each time. Often the final shot can be greatly improved by *cropping* or removing some of the top, bottom, or sides. If your home is too far away in the shot, crop "tighter" and it will effectively enlarge the home. Often you can crop out wires, cars, street, extra houses, etc and end up with a fundamentally better picture from the same shot. Always crop first, since you can Save the image larger. In most programs, there is a cropping tool or function where you drag the mouse from corner to corner, forming a new rectangle inside of the original image, showing the area you want to crop to.... Experiment visually because it makes a BIG difference when you crop... You can try a crop and then click [Edit][Undo] to go back and try a different one until you find the best crop.

2) Brightness and Contrast - Again, most programs have a control where you and increase/decrease brightness and contrast. Usually, you can slide a button and watch what happens to the photo - so it's easy to make adjustments. You might find that the camera shot a picture with a nice blue sky but the house is too dark. By increasing the brightness, the sky will wash out but the house might look better! Contrast is the relationship between the light and dark parts of an image. So a picture on a foggy day, where everything looks flat and gray, is said to have LOW contrast. A shot taken on a bright, sunny, winter day will be very HIGH in contrast, where the shadows appear almost black, and the white snow is almost blinding. By using the Contrast button in your Digital Darkroom, you can adjust for too much or too little contrast. NEITHER the contrast or brightness adjustments should be very big. A little goes a long way. Too much looks "wrong."

3) Color - The good news is that cameras often pick the right color for pictures, but sometimes they are fooled or have to deal with mixed lighting, like fluorescent bulbs which have a tendency to look greenish to film and cameras. Again, your darkroom software will have a color adjustment control or sometimes even an "auto correct" setting to try. Again, when changing color, a little will usually look better than too much correction. Most programs have a visual way of changing color, meaning it shows you different versions of the image with different color shifts, and you pick the one you want. The secret of color correction is to know the color "opposites" so you can either add or subtract color to make a correction. Here are the color opposites:

red - cyan
green - magenta
yellow - blue

4) Compression and File Type: Once you have cropped and corrected your image, it's time to save it to a file so you can use it! When you are cropping and changing a photo, ALWAYS give the file a new name such as 123ElmStKitchen.jpg or FloridaTrip15.jpg so you can find it later and also so you don't erase the original image - you might want to make the photo a different size or crop next week.... In most Photo Editing programs, you can [Save AS] and then give the file a new name.

4a)Files come in different types, usually with a matching "ending" on the file name, such as .jpg, .bmp, .gif, etc. Your camera and programs will differ on the type they use. Kodak and PaperPort even have their own special formats. So, when you are finished fixing up your photos, make sure to [Save As] or [Export] them to the .jpg (pronounced JAY-peg) format as it is the most universal type for the internet.

4b)When you save .jpg files, there is usually a setting for *Compression* of the image. This is the amount the program shrinks the file size to make it easier to send or download. But there's no free lunch; if you compress the image too far, the quality suffers and it looks bad. So you don't want to over-compress. I suggest you experiment with a test and send it to yourself until you find the right setting - then you can use that each time thereafter.