Create your own greeting card-Dicken's had some help creating his

 Step 1-Edit the photo
As I have said many times, every photo needs to be cropped and color corrected and this shot is no exception. I used CorrectPhoto to crop the photo using the 4×6 cropping format. I chose not to center Dickens so I could add the greeting on the right side of the photo. Using the OneClick color correction feature I clicked on the white portion of his hat and I was done.

Crop and color correct the photo-I used CorrectPhoto Editor

Step 2-Add Greeting Text to Photo
To add the text I used PictoColor’s ImageTitler because it is so simple (I still have difficulty using Photoshop Elements to add text to photos and it takes too long.)

Add Titles and Text to Photos with ImageTitler by PictoColor

After opening ImageTitler I selected the edited photo of Dickens and typed in the text I wanted. I then adjusted the text size and moved the text to the location I wanted using the arrow buttons. I then selected the type fonts from the pull down menu to see which one I liked best. After quickly going through the list of available fonts I settled on Times New Roman with the Bold and Italics option. The whole process only took a couple of minutes and I was finished with Dicken’s greeting card. The quality of the text on the photo is really sharp and crisp and will print quite nicely.

My friend Dick and his wife Joan decided to use a vacation photo for their greeting card this year. Dick is the software developer that created PictoColor’s CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler (I will talk more about Dick in a future post) so he obviously used ImageTitler to add the text to their photo. 

Dick used CorrectPhoto and ImageTitler to create holiday card

After editing and adding the title to the photo they ordered their cards from Costco.com and picked up the cards the next day.

Take the time to create your own greeting card.
If you plan to send a photo greeting card or including a photo with your card I suggest you take spend a few minutes editing and titling the photo. I don’t know if you are like us, but we display the cards and photos we receive during the holidays. Most of the photos end up on our refrigerator door and are seen by our holiday guests. Quite often someone will ask, “Who is this?” So, why not add your name to the photo and answer the question before it is asked? Also, most of the photos tend to be dull and lifeless because, a common characteristic of digital camera photos. As I have discussed many times that is a problem that is simple to fix. It is simple and fast to create a photo greeting card you will be proud to send. All it takes is a little time and the right tools.

Wayne  www.correctphoto.com

Convert Color to Black and White with Software

 

While many of the newer digital cameras are equipped with a digital effects function that will allow you to create a black and white photo, I suggest you shoot in color and use software to create the black and white or sepia tone photo. It is really easy to do with Photoshop Elements or CorrectPhoto.

Photoshop Elements
To convert and photo to black and white in Elements 6.0 or 7.0 select Enhance on the top Menu bar and click on Convert to black and white.

Photoshop Elements Enhance Menu to Convert to Black and White

A second window will open allowing you to make a variety of adjustments if you desire. However, unless the resultant image is unacceptable I would avoid moving sliders around and just click OK .  

Photoshop Elements Black and White Adjustment Window

Another alternative for creating black and white and sepia tone photos available to Elements users is a plug-in called iCorrect EditLab Pro by PictoColor. A tutorial entitled “Rediscovering Black and White Photography”explains how to create stunning monotone, sepia and duotone photos.

CorrectPhoto
To convert a color photo to a black and white or sepia tone photo in CorrectPhoto select the OneClick tool from the tool bar.

CorrectPhoto Enhancements for Black and White Conversion

Sepia Tone Photo created with CorrectPhoto with OneClick Color

Black and White and Sepia Tone photos have become very popular and one of the neat things about digital photography is that it is easy to turn color photos into stunning black and white with virtually a click of a mouse. How easy is that?

Wayne   http://www.correctphoto.com

Yesterday is was 10 degrees below zero as I sat on our porch enjoying the warmth of the sun. Inside my wife’s colorful orchids where blooming and outside the snow was cold and white. I couldn’t resist taking a couple of photos with my trusty old Canon G5 in Auto Mode—actually I took about 20 shots.

Orchids & Snow-Photo Editing Can be Fun

And, if you have visited this blog before you know that I believe every digital photo can benefit from a little cropping and color correcting.  I, of course, used CorrectPhoto because it is easy and I have the thumbnail images available to quickly pick the photo I want to edit.  The OneClick color correction feature of CorrectPhoto makes color correction a snap.  But, if you have Photoshop Elements and know how to use it go ahead edit the photo with it.  You can add the OneClick color correction with iCorrect OneClick Plug-inand get the same quick color correction that is in CorrectPhoto.

Orchids & Snow-Before/After Editing with CorrectPhoto

As a few of my friends are finding out photo editing can be fun—if it is easy. I enjoy seeing how I can improve a photo more than taking the photo. The key to having fun is either having a photo editing program that is easy and fast to learn and use or really knowing how to use a feature rich editor like Elements.  If you are creative, patient, and willing to learn Elements is an excellent program. For most folks it is too complicated and time consuming and, as a result, they simply do not edit their photos.  If you are intimidated by photo editing I suggest you discover, as my friends Bill, Ron, and Dick (non of whom have patience) did, photo editing can be fun when they finally started using the copy of CorrectPhoto I gave them.

Orchid Photo Edited with CorrectPhoto

Since it is too cold to play golf in Minnesota in January (and most of the US) we might as well edit the photos we took this summer and dream of the warm weather just around the corner. And, think of Orchids.

Orchids in Winter-Cropped and Color Corrected with CorrectPhoto

Wayne http://www.correctphoto.com

As I discussed in my last post, every digital photo needs to be cropped (“Why Crop?”). To crop a photo you need a photo editing program and there are many to choose from. Most likely, there was an editing program included in with your digital camera and most online print services offer some level of editing features. A simple fact is that most photo editing programs are too complicated and difficult to learn for most digital photographers whose primary interest is taking pictures and showing them to friends and family. You have to determine your level of interest and amount of time you have to devote to learning a photo editor and to edit photos.

From my perspective if you are willing to learn to use a comprehensive photo editing program I would recommend Photoshop Elements by Adobe. If you are not, I recommend CorrectPhoto by PictoColor (Admittedly, I am a bit prejudice regarding CorrectPhoto, but the choice is yours.) If you don’t want to spend money on a photo editing program you might want to consider using the Windows Photo Gallery editor included in Windows Vista or a free online service. I do believe, however, that photo editing is best done on your computer before images are uploaded to an online print or sharing service. I would also avoid using Photo Kiosks at retail stores to edit photos, but I will talk about that in a future post.

As I previously discussed (Photo Applications) before you crop you must decide what you are going to do with the photo. For this discussion I will assume you want to make a 4×6 print.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

If you are willing to learn a comprehensive photo editing program Adobe Photoshop Elements is an excellent choice. It is a great photo editing and organizing application from the gold standard photo application software company, Adobe. The current version for Windows is 7.0 and for the Mac it is 6.0. I use Elements for some of the more complicated editing tasks such as combining two images or when I need to airbrush a photo, but I find it a bit complicated and time consuming for the basic editing functions. And, like most photo editing and organizing applications, Elements likes to take over your computer for all photo applications unless you set your preferences to avoid this aggravation. The list price of Photoshop Elements is $99.95.

 

Photoshop Elements Crop Photo Menu

 

 

 

Cropping a photo in Elements is not that complicated when you know where the cropping tool and settings are located.

1. After you open an image file locate and click on the cropping tool on the left vertical tool bar (10^th icon from the top).
2. When the crop tool is selected a second menu appears under the top menu bar. Click on the little arrow next to the Aspect Ratio and select the 4x6in cropping format.
3. Move the “cropping cursor” to select the area you want in the 4×6 print. This is a little awkward at first, but you will get the hang of it quickly. Elements uses a highlighted technique to identify the cropped area. When you are satisfied with the cropped area click on the green check market at the bottom of the area or hit Enter or Return and the cropped image will appear in the work area.
4. You may either save the cropped image or do additional editing, such as color correction. We will talk more about color correction in a future post; however, on this example I used a plug-in called iCorrect OneClick. The final image is shown below.
5. When you go to Save the corrected photo Elements will default to the .psd Photoshop file type. This may be okay if you are going to do more editing in Elements but, I recommend you save it in the jpg format and select the highest quality level. Then you will be ready to upload it to an online print service or take a CD to the photo store for prints.

Note: The resolution or pixel count will be less than the original when you crop in Elements.  In this example the original file size was 2592×1944 and the cropped image is 2255×1503. So, when you use Elements to crop a photo you want to be careful not to crop too much out of the image or the print will not be very sharp. This is the case of virtually all photo editing applications with the exception of CorrectPhoto which we will discuss next.

 

CorrectPhoto by PictoColor

 

 

 

 

CorrectPhotowas developed for digital photographers who are either not interested or have little time to learn a complicated photo editing program. It includes the basic editing functions: rotation, crop to fit, resize, one click color correction, red eye removal and sharpening. And, there is virtually no learning curve and you can crop and color correct a photo in seconds. I use it for over 90% of the photo editing I do for both personal use and for our websites and this blog. It is a Windows program only, so you Mac folks will have to learn Elements or buy a PC. (Right!) The price for CorrectPhoto is $39.95.

CorrectPhoto Easy to use Photo Editing Tools

 

 

 

CorrectPhoto has a built in Windows Explorer so when you open the program the My Pictures or Pictures folder will appear on the left. Select the folder with the photos you want to edit and click on the image and it will appear in the editing area.

 

CorrectPhoto Makes it Easy to Crop Photos

 

 

1. With the selected photo in the work area click on the cropping icon and then select the 4×6 Landscape cropping format and a 4×6 cropping area will appear.
2. Move the corners and sides with the cursor to select the area you want to keep. You can move the crop window by positioning the cursor anywhere within the crop window. When finished click the Apply button.
3. To color correct the image simply click on something white, black or grey (I clicked on the white shirt of the boss with the hat.) and you are finished cropping and color correcting the photo.

CorrectPhoto also has a Before/After viewing mode that lets you compare the edited photo with the original side by side.

CorrectPhoto-Compare Before/After

 

 

 

Note: The resolution of the final image is same as the original in the long dimension because of a unique AutoRez feature in CorrectPhoto. The resolution of the original photo was 2592×1944 and the CorrectPhoto edited photo is 2592×1733. To my knowledge CorrectPhoto is the only photo editing program with this feature and the cropped prints are as sharp as an un-cropped photo.

Here is the edited photo. Since I used iCorrect OneClick color correction plug-in in Photoshop Elements and CorrectPhoto employs OneClick Color the resultant cropped and color corrected photo looks the same. The only difference is that the CorrectPhoto edited photo is a higher resolution image because of the AutoRez feature in CorrectPhoto.

Cropped and OneClick Color Corrected with CorrectPhoto

 

 

 

 

 

Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery Editor

If you have a Windows Vista machine you might want to at least look at the editing functions within Windows Photo Gallery. After all it is free, but then you get what you pay for. When you select an image click on the Fix icon on the menu bar and the editing functions will appear on the right. Select Crop Picture and then the 4×6 Proportion (Crop Format) and the crop window will appear over the image. Cropping is about all I would suggest using the editor for. The Auto Color really doesn’t work very well and when you start playing around with the color controls (Color Temperature, Tint, and Saturation) you can quickly screw up the photo color. Microsoft’s idea of workflow is to write over the original when you apply the edits and blocks access the “Save As” function to easily put the corrected file in another folder. You can Copy the corrected file to another location, a bit inconvenient in my opinion. And, when you apply the edit it will over write the original file anyway. The editor does remember the edits and you can restore the photo to the original, but I would rather go back to the original in the archive file if I wanted to make changes.

Windows Photo Gallery Editor Crop Window

Summary

As I said at the start, there are many alternative programs and online services to choose from when it comes to editing photos. In my opinion, the best options to consider are Adobe Photoshop Elements and PictoColor CorrectPhoto. Microsoft’s Photo Gallery Editoris something to look at if you have Vista and maybe use it once in a while for a quick crop or sending an image via email, but it really isn’t a serious photo editor. So, it depends on how much time you want to invest in learning a photo editor and in actually editing photos as to which would be better for you. As I said, I use both, but 90+% of what I, and I suspect most of you, need to do is simply crop and color correct and for that, CorrectPhoto, is the best choice.

In future post I will discuss other photo editing tasks, including color correction, re-sizing, sharpening and red eye removal.

Wayne http://www.correctphoto.com