The Basics of Photo Editing

What does a properly exposed photo look like?

Histogram: What does it tell us?A histogram tells us the tonal range of a photo. It graphs the tones in your image from black (on the left) to white (on the right).

The higher the graph at any given point the more pixels of that tone that are present in an image.So a histogram with lots of dark pixels will be skewed to the left and one with lots of lighter tones will be skewed to the right.

A properly exposed photo has good tonal range. This means that the full range of tones from pure black to pure white is present in the photo.

In digital photography it is better to mistakenly underexpose a photo rather than overexpose, because the photo can be lightened in Photoshop. However, when a photo is overexposed information in the light areas cannot be recovered.

This photo is overexposed. The left side (showing the dark tones) of the histogram has almost no information. There is a spike in the mid-tones and a sudden rise at the far right side of the histogram, showing the areas of pure white where the photo is overexposed.

This photo is underexposed. There is a spike on the far left showing the dark values present in the photo. On the right side of the histogram that shows the light tones, there is no information.

This photo has a balance of dark tones and light tones, which is shown by a well-distributed histogram.

Photos and information from this section taken from: http://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-histograms

Adjusting exposure using the histogram in

Photoshop ElementsTo adjust exposure, go to “Enhance” > “Adjust Lighting” > “Levels”

NoteThe beauty of a histogram is that the small LCD display on your camera is not really big enough to give you an great review of a picture and you can often get home to find that you’ve over or under exposed an image. Checking the histogram can tell you this while you’re in a position to be able to adjust your settings and take another shot.

To adjust the levels, drag the arrows underneath the histogram until your photo has a balance of light, middle, and dark tones.

Adjusting Colour Curves

Another important step in editing exposure is using Colour Curves. Go to “Enhance” > “Adjust Colour” > “Adjust Colour Curves”

Converting photos to Black and White

You may wish to convert your colour photos to black and white to make your images more expressive. To do so, click “Enhance” > “Convert to Black and White”

You can adjust the colour levels to change the emphasis of lighting in your black and white photo.

Adjusting colour saturation

To intensify the colours in your photo go to “Enhance” > “Adjust Colour” > “Adjust Hue/Saturation”

Saving your photos after editing

When you edit photos save them as TIFF files. If you are using JPEG files and edit without changing to TIFF, each time you save you are losing detail from your image because it compresses the file.

To adjust specific colours in your photo select the colour from the drop down menu and adjust the levels to your liking.