Most people that use digital cameras seem frightened by the technology. They are quite happy to take their cameras and/or memory card into Boots and get some 6x4s printed off, just as they used to do with their 35mm compacts. But there is more to digital imaging than that; what do you do if your photographs do not 'come out' as you expected? What if you want an enlargement? What if you just want to do something different?

Many digital imaging tutorials assume some computer knowledge, and most assume some knowledge of Adobe Photoshop. Whilst Photoshop is a brilliant program (in all its incarnations) it really is not necessary to own this program to help you with your photographs. You can pick up a version of Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is a simplified version of the full Photoshop, on the eBay auction site for anything from £10 upwards, depending on which version you bid for.

I am using version 2.0 as I believe this is the simplest of all the versions - it is slightly better than version 1.0 and not so complicated as versions 3.0 or 4.0. The program also does not take up so much room on your computer.

So, here we go. You have installed Elements on your computer, so now let us do some simple operations.

Opening Your Image

Click on the 'Open' icon, which looks like an open folder; if you can't find it, it is the second icon from the left after the Adobe "A" icon. Alternatively, click on File>Open (or hold the Control button on your keyboard down and press 'O;). You will see a window open on your screen entitled 'Open' with a text box preceded by the words 'Look In'. By clicking on the Down Arrow on the right of this text box you should be able to navigate to the folder your images are in.

Click on the image you wish to work on, then click on 'Open' at the bottom right hand corner of the window. Your image should now open in the main window, and the small window will close.

Basic Adjustments
1. Resizing the Image

Decide what size you want the image to be, either for printing or displaying on screen. Good sizes for printing are 6" x 4" (150mm x 100mm) for enprints, 8" x 6" for something a little bigger, or 11" x 8" for mounting and displaying. Let us say that you want a picture of 8" x 6" to put in a frame on your sideboard.
Click on Image>Resize>Image Size and a small window will open. This window is in three sections, Pixel Dimensions, Image Size and two boxes underneath the second section called Constrain Proportions and Resample Image.

Let us consider these one at a time.

The Pixel Dimensions box shows how many pixels the image is made up of, across and down, e.g. a 2 megapixel camera will give dimensions of Width 1600 Height 1200 and the file size 5.49M. (this is made up of 1600 x 1200 x 3 - the explanation for the '3' is that there are 1600 x 1200 pixels for each primary colour of Red, Blue and Green).

The Image Size box shows the physical dimensions of the image, bearing in mind the number of pixels per inch. On our 1600 x 1200 image, for example, at the default pixels per inch of 72 (the resolution of your screen) our image will be 22.222 inches x 16.667 inches. This is obviously too big for our requirements, as we only want an 8" x 6" print; and 72 pixels per inch would not give a very detailed print.

The two boxes underneath are easily understood. The Constrain Proportions box, when ticked, ensures that, when one dimension is changed the other dimension changes in proportion. The Resample Image box, when ticked, asks the computer to calculate extra pixels when an image is resized upwards, or tells the computer to discard pixels when an image is resized downwards.. To keep the image the same size, i.e. 1600 x 1200, this box should be unticked.

So, let us resize our image to give us an 8" x 6" print. Make sure a tick appears in the Constrain Proportions box but that there is no tick in the Resample Image box. Change to width to 8 inches; we will see that the Height changes to 6" and the Resolution increases to 200 pixels per inch. The actual physical size of the image, as shown by Pixel Dimensions, is still 1600 x 1200 pixels. What we have done is redistributed the 1600 x 1200 pixels, so that instead of there being only 72 pixels to the inch, we now have 200. This will show much greater detail in the print, as each pixel is only 1/200th inch square instead of 1/72nd inch square - more pixels per inch means more detail! Click on OK. The picture on the screen will still be showing at the same size, because its pixel dimensions are still the same. The only difference will be in the print, which will be at 8" x 6" instead of 22.222" x 16.667".

2. Checking the Levels

The reason for checking the Levels is to check that the pixels are evenly distributed across the image. If the image is too light (over-exposed) or too dark (under-exposed) this will show up on the levels histogram.

Over-exposure is shown when there are no pixels showing on the left-hand side of the histogram and under-exposure when there are no pixels on the right-hand size on the histogram.
The first step is to open the Levels control window. Go to Enhance>Adjust Brightness/Contrast>Levels (or hold the Control key down and press 'L'). We will be shown a window with a graph (the histogram) showing the distribution of pixels, from dark (on the left) to light (on the right). If the graph does not start from the bottom left corner and finish at the bottom right corner, there is a exposure error. Under the graph you will notice three triangles, one at each end and one in the middle. These correspond with the Input Levels shown in the three boxes at the top of the window. We should now click on one or other (or both) of the outside two triangles, and slide them so that they appear under the extremities of the graph. We will see the Input Level on whichever triangle we have moved has changed. If we now look at the picture, we should now see that this has also changed - to show the before and after effect of moving the triangles, click on the Preview box, removing the tick to show the original image, and putting the tick back in to show the amended image.

If at this stage we still feel that there is a further exposure error, e.g. that the whole image is either too light or too dark, we can now change the overall exposure. Click on the central triangle, and slide it to the left to lighten (make sure the Preview box is ticked) or to the right to darken the image. Click OK to make the changes effective.

3. Hue/Saturation

Images usually benefit from some changes in saturation, that is, the strength of the colour in the image. To do this, we click on Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue/Saturation (or hold down the Control key and press 'U') to open the adjustment window. Unless our picture was taken in unfavourable lighting conditions, e.g. digitally, in Tungsten light with no flash but with the white balance set to Sunshine, or with daylight film in Tungsten lighting, we should not need to adjust the Hue slider. So for now we will ignore this slider. We will also ignore the Lightness slider.

Slide the Saturation slider until the image looks right, some value between 15 and 25 should be sufficient, check the changes by having the Preview box ticked, then press OK to make the changes effective.

4. Sharpening the Image

Most images, whether imported from a scanner or from a digital camera, will need some sharpening applied to improve the image. It is dangerous to apply too much sharpening, as this will show as points of light in the final print.

Most photographers make use of a Filter called Unsharp Mask, which contrary to its name, make the image appear sharper to the eye.

Click on Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to open the adjustment window. We will see there are three sliders called Amount, Radius and Threshold. These control different aspects of the sharpening process. I will not go into the technical details too much, but basically, the Amount slider controls the amount of sharpness applied by increasing the contrast between adjoining pixels (usually some figure between 75 and 150 should be sufficient); the Radius slider controls the number of pixels to sharpen round the edges (usually a figure between 1 and 2 is enough for high resolution images); and the Threshold slider looks at the difference between pixels of similar colour and tone to decide whether to sharpen (if the Threshold figure is left a '0', the computer will try to sharpen a clear blue sky, even though the pixels are almost identical, and this will cause pixellation in the sky; by using a figure between 2 and 5, pixels of similar colour and tone will not be affected).

Conclusion

And that really is all there is to it. By correctly exposing and composing our picture in the camera, and not relying on computer wizardry to get us out of trouble, we really should not need to manipulate our images any more.