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In many ways, fixing a problem photograph is like tackling a household repair. In both cases, the first step is to assess the damage and determine whether the solution involves a minor tweak or a major renovation. After assessing what's wrong with your picture and how you may be able to improve it, you need to plan the order in which you'll make the changes you have in mind. Certain image-editing moves need to be made late in the game because they can limit your ability to make other corrections.
For best results, do your retouching and restoration work using the following ten-step approach:
1. Level the horizon line.
If your image is tilted, use your software's rotation tools to shift the scene as needed.
2. Correct convergence problems.
Convergence refers to a phenomenon that sometimes occurs when you shoot with a wide-angle lens, which can cause vertical lines to tilt toward the center of the image. You can fix the problem using perspective or distortion tools.
3. Crop (trim away) unwanted areas around the edges of the picture.
Cropping at this stage reduces the size of the image file that your computer system needs to process when you make your remaining changes. The smaller the image file, the faster your system can work. If you're not certain how tightly you want to crop the picture, leave a little excess.
4. Adjust color and exposure.
Don't worry about areas that you plan to cover up later, such as scratches, dust, and other unwanted objects. Concentrate on the main subject for now.
5. Do retouching and recomposing work.
Clean away the gunk from your picture, fix red-eye problems, and move elements from here to there as needed.
6. Check color and exposure again.
Depending on what you changed in Step 5, you may need to tweak color and exposure in altered areas again to make your edits blend in with the untouched regions.
7. Apply creative filters, if desired.
Most image-editing programs offer special-effects filters that you can use to give your picture the look of a watercolor painting, a charcoal sketch, antique photograph, and the like.
8. Set the final image size and resolution.
Resolution is one of the most vital issues in producing the highest quality prints and in preparing pictures for online use.
9. Sharpen as needed.
As your last editing move, use a sharpening filter to tighten up soft-focus areas. Why wait until this point to sharpen or blur? Because the preceding steps can affect how much you need to adjust the image sharpness. For example, after reducing image resolution to prepare an image for online distribution, you often need to sharpen the image to bring back details that get lost during that process.
10. Do a final close-up inspection for dust and scratches.
Sharpening often brings dust and scratches that you previously didn't see into view.
 | As you complete each of these steps, be sure to save a copy of the image file under a name that's different from the original. That way, if you don't like what happens in the next editing step, you can return to the last version of the picture and try again. Within each step, save after you make a significant editing change, for the same reason. |
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