DIGITAL DARKROOM Photo Editing in P.S.P

Paint Shop Pro Tutorials by Karen

I am a seriously keen amateur photographer and am as mad about photography as I am P.S.P! I display my best photo`s on my website, and have often been asked how I get the photo quality I do. My answer is that a lot of photo`s don`t come out perfect, I often have to work on them a bit before I am happy with them. In fact I have repeated this so many times I thought I should just write a tutorial instead! I won`t go anywhere without at least my digital camera, and that`s how I get some unexpected photo`s such as this one. My husband and I went to visit a relative in the next village from us, this gorgeous horse was standing in his field looking all lonely... I am also a horsewoman and just had to go and say hello!!! I was rewarded by him patiently allowing me to take some photographs. However, the sun was behind the trees facing the camera, so the resulting photo`s were in need of some digital manipulation... this is where PSP comes in!. The best photo was the one I will use for this tutorial, because it was not too good to begin with, and therefore is the ideal photo to practise on.! You may use my photo for this tutorial only - or one of your own that could do with a little bit of help... why not let P.S.P become your "Digital Darkroom"! Right click the photo below and save on your hard disk.

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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial which is written for PSP V 7 but should work in other versions.

Ready ?... lets begin...

That`s it... don`t forget to save your finished photo! now try some photo`s of your own, use different effects and different settings, don`t be afraid to experiment, there is always the "undo" function if you don`t like what you did. Please remember the images above have been reduced in size further to simplify downloading... your finished result should be clearer depending on the photo used.

Turn this...

...into this

I have already resized this photo for use, it started at 1600 x 1200 pixels, I made it 25% of this as I like to have my photo`s online at 400 x 300 or thereabouts. If you are using your own photo and need to resize it, do that first then go effects / sharpen / sharpen. The steps described below are for this photo and are intended as a guide only. you may need to experiment and change some settings, use other effects or use less effects, it depends on the original photo you are working with. You can use this tutorial for photo`s which are too light, just change the "positive" settings for "negative" (minus)...(big thanks to Melissa & Michele for this idea!) With a little practise you will soon recognise the problem with your photographs and instinctively know what to do to correct it.

Open your photo in psp. I am assuming you are working with my photo, which is rather dark... Go colors - adjust - brightness/contrast, apply as in fig 1. (fig 1a)

As you can see, this has lightened the photo, but now it is a little bit washed out. Go effects / enhance photo / fade correction and apply as in fig 2 (fig 2a)

This has added a little more depth, but it still needs a little bit more definition. Go effects / enhance photo / clarify, apply as in fig 3 (fig 3a)

This isn`t too bad, but I still want to do a little bit more to it... Go colors - adjust - hue / saturation / lightness. Apply as in fig 4 (fig 4a)

I could leave it here, but I want to show you a few more little things we could do... so now go effects / enhance photo / automatic contrast enhancement and apply as in fig 5 (fig 5a)

Perhaps now we need to adjust the focus a little... go effects / sharpen / unsharp mask and apply as in fig 6 (fig 6a) (I always apply this effect 3 times for extra clarity, but that is up to you)

There`s not a great deal of difference but just enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe now the photo could do with a little more colour... go to effects / enhance photo / automatic saturation enhancement apply as in fig 7 (fig 7a)

Well, that`s about as good as it will get, I am much happier with this photo now I have digitally processed it! However, I since decided I would prefer more horse and less background. So I opened the original 1600 x 1200 photo, took my selection tool set at rectangle, zero feather and zero antialias, selected around the horse and then went image / crop to selection. I then resized the photo to 400 x 300 pixels and applied all the steps described above, plus an extra effects / sharpen / sharpen at the end. This is what I got...