Sometimes, after we have taken maybe hundreds or thousands of pictures through our travels, we sit down and start selecting our best shots. But, even when we capture and compose some of our best pictures, still some of them don’t look as good on the computer as they did on camera. So, when editing, we need to keep that photographer mentality to make sure our pictures deliver the best of our experience.
(image credit : island-Life )
It’s easy to fall into a rut of taking the same types of travel pictures, especially when our point-and-shoot cameras seem to do all the hard work of shooting. That’s the fun of it though. Rather than photographing the same old pictures from summers past, try out some of these improvement techniques from our top tips for using your digital point and shoot this travel season.
Enhance the Levels
(image credit : hans hendriksen )
Levels is a good place to start image enhancements. Levels is a tool that gives you a great amount of creative control over the contrast, brightness, and color of your image. In theory, a good picture should have a histogram (the black mountain range) that covers from the darkest shadow to the brightest highlight.
As you can see in the above image, the histogram lacks a great deal of shadows (the flat part on the left side) and highlights (the flat part on the right). In order to enhance the shadows and highlights, the small arrows below the histogram should be moved until they touch the “mountain range” or until the point the image has an optimum visual effect.
Use the manual modes
(image credit : Nic Luckypenguin )
Make the bold move to switch the camera dial from “Auto” to “Manual.” More point-and-shoot digital cameras these days come with built-in manual modes, depending on price and manufacturer. Some point-and-shoots cameras include manual features in which users can control aperture and shutter speed, features that were once only limited to higher-priced SLRs for advanced users. That isn’t the case anymore. Some point-and-shoots now carry manual functions that give users the benefit to control shooting capabilities in varied lighting and speed situations.
Balance Some Colors and Saturate Others
(image credit : hans hendriksen )
Overcast and foggy days tend to flatten the environment colors; giving us an image that is lacking those vibrant characteristics we are experiencing in real life. With Color Saturation (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation) you can increase how vibrant those colors will be expressed in a picture to generate more impact. Care should be taken when adding color saturation to an image since we want the image to still look real, with real colors.
Crop the Unnecessary
(image credit : hans hendriksen )
It is a good composition practice to add a buffer zone to your images. This means to add a slight border or zoom out a little bit from your aimed composition in order to provide space for error. Many quick shots tend to cut or shoot things right at the edges, making the image feel tight and without breathing space.
Then, while editing, the cropping tool (Tool Palette > Crop) allows you to keep exactly what you want in the composition and get rid of the rest.
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