Photo Enhancement 101

by Raymond Shay
www.RaymondShay.com
Ray@RaymondShay.com

These are the basic steps in image enhancement. Almost every image you’ll see in print will have had these basic steps performed. Granted, some images have had many, many more modifications done, yet these steps will be paramount in the mix. And these steps are early in the batting-order.

Original Image

First, lets take this picture as an example. Not bad, huh? Looks all right I guess? Well, let’s see what we can do with this image with a few basic steps, OK? Then we’ll see how much we like this unedited image.

These screen prints have been taken from Photoshop CS and CS2. There’s almost an identical tool in every photo-editing package. They all work the same way; so don’t be rattled if your photo editor is not from Adobe. The tools will still look almost the same too (I bet Adobe loves that). If you don’t yet have a photo editor, there are several free ones on the web, and I highly recommend you consider Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, as it is a fine, fine non-professional photo editor. All the Adobe photo editors are free for a 30-day trial at www.adobe.com

Step one, set the Black and the White points…

Here, we are going to explain to our computer what area of this image is BLACK and what area of this image is WHITE. You’ll notice your color improve greatly as we define these points. The color shift will lessen, the brightness of the image will be unveiled and friends will like you better.

Open your levels dialog box by Image > Adjustments> Levels
(Fig L1)

Fig L1 (This might be very slightly different for non-Adobe editors)

It should look like this, that is, without all my tacky arrows on it.

Fig L2

WE ARE NOT GOING TO MOVE THESE SLIDERS, as it’s not usually needed. Here’s how the big-boys do it:

First, click the OPTIONS button (See Fig L2) and let’s tell the computer what we mean when we utter the word BLACK or the word WHITE. We’ll only need to do this step once. So, click the OPTIONS button as in Fig L3.:

Fig L3 Change the BLACK to RGB values of 12,12,12. Make sure the "Save as Defaults" is checked.

Clicking the BLACK box next to “Shadows”, that brings up a color picker. Fig. L3. Change the RBG value to R=12, G=12, and B=12. Then click OK.

Good, I knew you could do it (all your friends were wrong). Now, let's define WHITE:

Fig L4 Changing the WHITE value to RGB 245,245,245. Make sure the "Save as Defaults" is checked or you will die.

Just click the WHITE box next to the “Highlights” and, in the color picker, change the RBG values to R=245, G=245, and B=245. Then click OK. Fig L4

TURN ON THE “SAVE AS DEFAULTS”! Remember, we only have to do this once. Then click OK.

So, uh, what did we just do? Oh, and why?
Actually, we just redefined what BLACK really is, and what WHITE really is. We redefined BLACK to be “almost black” and WHITE to be “almost white”. Why? Good question. In BLACK, or in WHITE, there’s absolutely no detail. None. And those shades that are close to BLACK, or close to WHITE, are by default, too extreme to contain any detail whatsoever either. So, now we’ve set the extremes so that shades near black or white can now display detail.

For example, when that Cop shines his thirty-cell flashlight in your eyes at night, it's really hard to read the printing on the bulb. We're gonna turn down Bubba's flashlight just a little so we CAN read the bulb maker. But, still, no donut jokes; they hate that.

Whew, finally back to our picture! Now that we’ve told out computer how we want BLACK to appear and how we want WHITE to appear, lets find a place on our image that should be black and let’s find another point on our image that should be white.

This next technique is secret, an undocumented feature of Photoshop, so please don’t tell anyone. With our levels dialog box still open, place your mouse cursor on the little slider on the LEFT side (I labeled that slider as BLACK above), hold down the ALT key (YES, your picture will disappear), click and hold the mouse button and SLOWLY drag the slider to the right. Fig L5.. You’ll start seeing very small parts of the image reappear, STOP! Notice the location of the FIRST “glob” that appears. Release all the buttons your holding down. The first little glob that appeared is the darkest area of your photo.

Fig L5 ALT-Click and drag the left slider slowly until a spot appears. this is the darkest area of our image. It appears the darkest area of our example image is under the bushes. Just return the slider to its original position, click the black eyedropper then click the area under the bushes!

Now, comes the first cool part, finally. Drag your slider back to it original, upright and locked position (all the way to the left). Click the little eyedropper on the left (it’s supposed to look like a BLACK eyedropper. Hey! I didn't make it.), finally click the area of the image we determined as the darkest “glob”. WHOA!! Suddenly our image looks much better already! Oh, this is really cool….

In the above image, see what one click can do? Notice areas such as the water, the flagpoles, the sky, etc. The original does not look nearly so good now, does it? Now, do you see why people like me just so darned much?

.

Let's see what TWO clicks can do.....

So, let’s define WHITE in the exact same fashion, using the slider on the RIGHT this time. We’ll ALT-Click the slider, slowly move it (drag) to the left until something reappears, return the slider, click on the left eyedropper (it’s supposed to look like a white eyedropper, I didn't make that one either.) and finally click the white area on the image.

Fig L6 As one might expect the whitest area is the sun-side of the flagpoles. Now, just return the slider, click on the white (right) eyedropper and click this point again. You're a pro! let's keep going..

A NOTE ABOUT CHOOSING WHITE: Some images may not contain white, so be happy with the improvement most all images will get from setting only the black. Also, SPECULAR HIGHLIGHTS, like the sparkle of a diamond or the shine of chrome are not white. They are, for our purposes here, whiter than white. Don’t use them as a white point. None of the really cool people do it...

Now you can do the same for the middle eyedropper, click on any area you KNOW is somewhat middle gray. There’s not a cute little alt-click method for middle gray, and the tricks for determining middle gray are poor at best. So, omit the middle gray if your not sure something is gray, or you can click on things that appear to be gray, if you don’t like the change in your image, just CNTL-Z (That’s UNDO, THE most used command), and try elsewhere. Most of the time I don’t define middle gray with an eyedropper, unless I’m pretty sure something is actually gray.

Just click the “OK” button on the levels dialog box and admire your improved image. But we’re not through yet. Nosireee.

Difference in original images and setting the black and white points. See, you thought I was an idiot, didn't you?

Step Two: Bumping the color a tad

This step is MUCH simpler; we’re just going to increase the color saturation a little bit. Color saturation is a cool term for the richness of the colors. So here goes:

Open the “Hue/Brightness” dialog box with IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS> HUE/Brightness
(Remember the weasel words above? It may look a little different on other editors, but it’s there.).

Slightly increase the color saturation.

Now, drag the middle slider to the right just a little. Usually a value between 4 and 15 is good. Too much and you’ve changed your image into a velvet painting of Elvis. Usually, between 8 to 15 are my most common choices.

CLICK “OK”

Step Three: Just a little sharpening

I own at least a hundred pounds of books and technical papers on sharpening (No, I’m not too sure why). It seems it’s the most written about topic in photo editing, yet FAR from the most important. Still, it needs to be done, so let’s sharpen using some general settings and see what we think. With me?

We’ll use the Unsharp Mask sharpener (really a stupid name, from the old days, but you’ll get used to it, eventually). Access the USM dialog box with:

FILTER > SHARPEN > Unsharp mask

General sharpening settings using the Unsharp Mask. Now, be stingy with the settings, you can turn Granny's face into a Rand-McNalley Road Atlus.

You’ll see three sliders, Amount, Radius, and Threshold. I’ll leave the descriptions of these to the HELP button, and just suggest a setting that’s good for general sharpening.

Amount = 100 to 130%
Radius = 1.0 to 1.5
Threshold = 0

Press OK

With sharpening, less is more, if you over sharpen, you'll create ghastly halos around all your dark edges. So, be cool...

Step Four: This image looks just a little tilted to me, ...you?

To straighten an image, I think best results are obtained when we can define a line on the image that should be either horizontal or vertical, and let the photo editor adjust the straightness from there.

In Adobe image editors, you find, hidden under the eyedropper tool, a handy little gizmo called the MEASURE TOOL. Usually, it’s for measuring distances and angles, as for text and stuff, but this little guy “talks” to the ROTATE command. Lemme show you.

The Measure Tool is hidden under the eyedropper.

Find a line on the image that should be horizontal (or vertical). With the MEASURE TOOL selected click one side of the line, hold down the mouse button and move the mouse to the other side of the horizontal (or vertical) line and release the mouse button.In our example image, we've got choices, but the edge of the pool looks like it's level (or the water would be pouring out), so let's drag our measure tool across there.

Dragging the Measure tool. Drag across something exactly vertical or horizontal. The yellow highlight was added for visibility and it makes me look good because I know how to do it..

I guess we now can see that this image is quite titled. But we can fix that….

Go directly to IMAGE > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary

The exact angle derived via the Measure tool is automatically entered. Just click OK!

Wow! Notice that the exact angle for the tilt, which we determined with the MEASURE TOOL, is already inserted! Just click OK. Now, our image is straight. Just CROP off the corners, and PRESTO! We’re straightened. Cool, but then again, I don't leave the house too much....

We're done! It's Miller time...

OK, let’s do a side-by-side (below), whaddaya think? After you get a grip on these steps, they’ll take literally only a couple of minutes and greatly improve your images and increase your popularity with the opposite sex. Well, it’ll improve you images anyway.

If you have questions, please email me at ray@raymondshay.com; I’ll help if I can.