Dennis Glennon's PHOTO TIPS
Digital Photography for the Photo Hobbyist
Camera Software & Graphic Manipulation
Although digital cameras offer settings that enable you to color, crop and alter your images before and just after taking a photograph, the software packages that accompany them (and those you can purchase separately) are just as impressive.
Those unfamiliar with graphic art software will find what can be done with an image simply astounding. You can take a picture of a gray leafless tree that's sitting in the middle of a dry field and turn it into something truly spectacular. With a little digital magic, you can deepen, and even completely change the color of the tree bark, pop some golden leaves on the tree's branches, place that tree in front of a pristine mountain lake, show a cloudless sky (after 'erasing' the clouds and deepening the blue), add a waterfall to the background, and call it "your work"!
To me, "digital art is not original art!" ... but, when using software to improve and enhance your pictures, the result is an original artistic creation!
With digital technology, anyone can design or re-design images to reflect whatever their imagination comes up with. To me, this is not true photography, but a fun form of artistic expression, and one that people that are enjoying more and more. It's exciting to see what can be done to an image with just a few mouse clicks. With basic photo software, you can dramatically improve any photograph easily, and in seconds.
What's great for the average user is that you don't have to be versed in photographic composition. When clicking the shutter of any camera, digital or non-digital, you may not pay too much attention to the tree you asked your son to stand in front of when taking his picture. Later, on your computer screen, or when looking at the developed print, you realize that the tree behind him appears to be growing out of your child's head! It didn't look like that in your camera's preview window, or to your eye, but when developed and enlarged, the photo looks pretty ridiculous. No problem! Use your photo software to erase the tree from the picture, or just 'cut' your child out of the image and 'paste' him onto another background entirely. Even if you are a hobbyist, I encourage you to play with the graphic art software that comes with whatever digital camera you purchase. You may find it to be an exciting new obsession!
The particular software you get with a camera isn't important. There are many good programs out there; ones you can use with your images whether the program came
with your digital camera or not. What is important is using some form of software program, rather than just loading your images in your computer and popping them on your website or printing them out, (or doing whatever it is you intend to do with them).
Promise yourself that you will commit to doing this, even though simply taking the pictures and loading them on your computer will be a thrill in itself. Trust me, that is a small percentage of what you can do with a digital camera, or rather; what you can do to the images you take with that camera.
Graphic art software can manipulate any image, not just those you take digitally.
You can even restore old photographs. Bring life back to faded color photos, repair imperfections such as scratches and tears, and deepen the contrast of black & white photos to make them look crisp and new. Newer photos can easily be made to look older by adding sepia tones to them and by using 'aging effects'. Images overloaded with a variety of elements can be given a clean look by cropping out busy backgrounds, and a classic look by surrounding them with decorative borders and frames.
For fun, expressive photos, crop your favorites in a variety of shapes. Use an assortment of graphic effects to dramatically change appearances. Add playful clipart, descriptive text, and even other photo images to create printable scrapbook album pages, artistic display prints, calendars, greeting and note cards, gifts, collages, online slideshows and more. Iron-on Transfer Paper allows you to make photo tee-shirts, tote-bags, pillows... anything your imagination comes up with!
With photo printers and photo-quality printing paper so readily available and so inexpensive compared to film and developing fees, you'd be missing half the fun of digital photography if you weren't to take the time to play with, and learn, the photo software accompanying your camera. Don't just learn how to use your digital camera and ignore its accompanying software. You will miss out on so much of what it can do for you and what you can do for your photos!
