One is that we are not as careful “framing” a shot with our digital camera as we were when we were shooting film. Remember when you looked through a view finder to frame the shot? And, since the roll of film only had 24 or 36 exposures AND you had to pay for developing the film AND pay for prints you took your time to make sure the shot was a good one. (I use to drive my family nuts with the time I took to take a picture.) Now, we look at that little screen on the back of the camera while holding the camera a foot in front of our face and expect to get a great picture. Good Luck!

Then there are the issues of color, red eye, and exposure that are more prevalent in digital photography than when we shot with film. I won’t go into the reasons in this article, but most digital photos suffer from one or more of these issues.

You can make your digital photos look more professional with a photo editor.

Tiger Woods on the First Tee-Cropped and Color Corrected with CorrectPhoto

The good news is that with digital photos you have a chance to make photos look better. Or, putting it another way, we have a chance to fix our framing mistakes and the camera’s color and exposure problems.  All you need is a photo editor and a computer.  And, you really don’t have to do a lot of editing. All most photos need to make them look more professional is a little cropping and color correction and maybe a bit of sharpening.  In the photo above of Tiger Woods on the first tee at Hazeltine Golf Club in Minnesota a few years I cropped the golfers standing on the tee. Then I color corrected to get rid of the dull morning haze. Because of the tight crop I also sharpened the cropped photo.

Better Vacation Photos

You don’t get many “do overs” when you are on vacation. Normally, you don’t look closely at the photos until you get home and load them on your computer or have prints made. So, you can’t go back and take the photo again. But, in the digital world all is not lost. In the following example I cropped out the food partial food vendor from the photo of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, MO, framed by the famous Arch-the Gateway to the Midwest.

St. Louis, MO Arch and Old Court House Cropped and Color Corrected

When I took the photo of the paddle boat and the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River I didn’t think about the focal point of the photo.  Here are two different approaches to cropping format and focal points. On the first example I used the standard 3×4 cropping format with a focus on the boat. In the second I used the 16×7 HDTV format focusing on the Eads Bridge. BTW, the Eads Bridge designed and built by James Eads in 1874 is one of America’s Great Masterpieces and is virtually unkown.

Paddle Boat on Mississippi River at St Louis

Eads Bridge Over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO-16x7 HDTV Format

 All photos can be made to look more professional

This sums up the point of this article. Virtually all of the digital photos you take can be made to look better with a little “basic” photo editing. By “basic” I mean cropping and color correcting and maybe sharpening. Unless you are creating something special you don’t need air brushing, cloning, erasing, etc. If you have Photoshop Elements all you need to learn is how to crop and color correct (I would recommend iCorrect OneClick plug-in for color correcting) or an easy program like CorrectPhotowhich has the basic functions you need. Here are links to several CorrectMyPhoto posts that discuss photo editing.

http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2008/11/30/crop-photos-how/

http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2009/07/09/snapshots-to-great-shots-make-your-photos-look-professional/

http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2009/07/28/snapshots-to-great-shots-correctphoto-video/

http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2009/06/23/fixing-color-the-easy-way/

http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2009/02/15/crop-photos-for-a-purpos/

If you enjoy taking pictures and capturing the events of your life you should take a little time to make them better. It really isn’t that difficult and it can be very enjoyable.  And, don’t be embarrassed that your photos don’t look professional the way you shot them. Why do you think the pros take so many shots and have Photoshop on their computer?  Yes, they fix their photos, too.

Happy Cropping!

Wayne http://www.correctphoto.com