😮
That’ll need a massive runway.
However, first of all I make a copy of my picture, and work on the copy, rather than mess with the original
Firstly, I check my photos to see if they are noisy, and if so run them through something like Neat Image to clean them up. But there is a fine judgement call here, because removing noise can sometimes reduce detail. You should compare it with the original, just to check you aren’t losing too much.
Secondly, I will open my copy picture in something like Paintshop Pro or Photoshop and:
Crop any unnecessary parts of the picture – depending on what my requirements are – to bring out the subject, or for artistic (ha, that’s a laugh with me) reasons – whatever, to improve the final result.
Resize it if it is for posting on a website. In their original format most digital cameras take pictures that are too big for casual use, they will be too big to display comfortably. Chose something like 800x or 1024x
Now I will adjust contrast to bring out or hide detail in the picture, or simply to make it look closer to what I thought I saw myself.
Heighten or reduce colour saturation, again, according to what I feel is best.
Apply a degree of “unsharp mask” to (strangely) sharpen the picture – they’re usually to soft for displaying on a monitor – but always being careful not to overdo it – you can end up with jagged lines, or halos around objects – a bit of a black art this one.
When saving the final result, I try to compress it as much as possible, without losing any detail or introducing any artifacts.
How you do all this will depend on the software you chose, and occasionally I might use other tools at my disposal to improve the picture in other ways.
This is just what I do with a standard picture that I don’t want to alter too much from the original. If I want to do anything else, such as create a collage or mask unwanted parts of the image, then things start getting complicated.
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