Can’t Get Those Perfect Shots? Digital Imaging Could Be Your Answer

When taking shots with your digital camera it's great fun, but there are always those shots you may find could do with a little enhancement to get them to perfection. For example, a touch more colour to the sky, or that obstruction in the corner you didn't see when you clicked the shutter release, so here's a little something to think about …

I'd like to introduce you to a fun side to working with digital files - namely ‘digital imaging'. For those who already know about it and maybe doing it already, then that's great and I share your enthusiasm - keep up the good work!

Digital Imaging - How it All Began for Me

Well it all started back in 1999, I had been studying Photoshop 5 at the time and getting to grips with restoring my digital photos. A framed picture had fallen from the wall and smashed, so I decided instead of buying a new picture, I would create one, and with my digital imaging skills I created a montage consisting of four images, had it printed in poster size at a local printers and voila my ‘Sun with a View by Yvonne Grubb' was born.

Another thing had also happened to me … it was one day when I took my printed portfolio of my photos into work and showed them around … just for the sheer excitement of showing my colleagues and friends what I had created. Well this led to someone asking me if I could retouch a photo of theirs, then another person asked and another person asked, which was a great feeling to be able to help digitally restore photos for not just myself, but for my friends, family and colleagues as well. In fact it helped me reap back a good percentage of my costs in learning Photoshop from the start!

So looking on years later, I have now acquired my own ways of using Photoshop (I now use Adobe Photoshop CS3) … to not only digitally retouch photos, but also create montages using more than one image … and I thought if I liked to do this, maybe you just might like to do the same.

Of course, Photoshop is a professional software package, and can seem a bit over-bearing at first, so this is why I want to help you bypass this difficult learning curve. I have also found, through my experience, that there are no right or wrong ways of doing something in Photoshop … once you find a way of doing something and it works for you then stick to it!

So bearing in mind what has happened to me, I was thinking you may want to digitally retouch your own photos, and thought it a good idea to put some very easy to understand videos together for you.

Now there are so many teaching methods out there, and it's choosing one you can get to grips with right from the start. The thing I found the most confusing when I was learning was this: tutorials quickly moving through tools and menus, until the task in question is completed. They just tell you to use whatever tool and do whatever … and that's it … but I found the thing they didn't really get over fully is the reasoning behind using certain tools - the basic understanding of it.

Now I feel a round understanding is very important, because if you're like me, if you're doing something, you pick it up much quicker if you understand WHY you are doing it … and this is what I found lacking in some teaching methods, in addition to them using tools that may not be necessary!

So I started creating a video tutorial with my own angle of teaching … because I have been using Photoshop for over 10 years now, having retouched many client's photos and created websites, having to optimise photos for my clients for quicker loading, then I have put over my knowledge and experience of digital imaging in my videos.

Also, rather than showing you what every single tool does (in my opinion you don't need to know about everything), I show you how to use certain tools which are the essentials that I mainly use, and give you an understanding behind using them, so you can get to grips and start thinking for yourself, rather than being spoon-fed!

I have created my digital imaging tutorial videos with practical projects in mind, including the obvious things you would want to know in retouching or editing your photos, like:

- How to brighten an image
- Remove a colour-cast
- Size your photo to fit a frame
- Crop out an unwanted background
- Remove undesirable objects and red eye
- Apply artistic effects
- Create a multiple exposure effect … plus lots more!

You've no need to worry if you have never used Photoshop before because I show you how to zoom in and pan around your image in order to be able to correct things in high magnification, which is important for accuracy when removing red eye, scratches or undesired objects.

Plus … in order to give you an even better understanding of using the basic selection tools, brush tools and layers palette in Photoshop - which are in my opinion the key essentials to know about when retouching your photos - I have specially prepared overviews explaining the use of these key essentials … plus videos showing how to use them easily.

Now you don't have to have the most recent version of Adobe Photoshop, as I mainly use the more basic tools that have been around in previous versions of the software, and they work better and fine-tune more than some of the automatic methods for retouching!

I have also created a couple of video chapters explaining about resolution used in an image, because if you're digitally retouching a photo and you're unaware of working in a lower resolution, you would be very disappointed if you had spent time on retouching a photo, had it printed maybe at a larger size, to find loss of picture clarity (jaggy edges or pixelation).

All digital photographic images comprise of resolution (what's known as pixels). When you zoom into any photo at high magnification you can see little coloured squares … these are the pixels that make up the data in your photo. It is dependent on how many pixels there are in your image whether you are able to print your photo at a larger size than usual.

Full details about my digital imaging tutorial can be found in my Free Report at my website … link at the bottom of this article.

Want to know a little more about digital imaging?

If you want a little more knowledge about digital imaging, I've written seven informative digital imaging articles you can find on my website. Just click the link at the bottom of this article to take you to my free report … there's a Digital Imaging Articles Link at the foot of my site.

Free Video for you with My Compliments

Visit my website and you'll not leave empty handed … go to the foot of my free report and you can grab yourself a free copy of one of my digital imaging videos to test out on your computer with my compliments. If you find this easy to understand, the rest of my videos are presented similarly.

I wish you well with your digital imaging endeavours!

Yvonne owns Digital Imaging Tutorial which offers people easy understanding videos on Getting the Best from your digital photos using Adobe Photoshop Yvonne Grubb's Digital Imaging Tutorial