Whether you scan your pictures from hard copies or download them from a digital camera there always seems to be something that needs to be changed.
This tutorial is for beginners and uses PSP 7 which has tools especially made for this purpose.

The first thing you need to do is get the correct tools on the tool bar.
If you have not changed the photo toolbar everything will already be there.
To display the photo Toolbar click "View - Toolbars" Check "Photo Toolbar" and "Close"
The following are the tools I will use in this set of tutorials.
I recommend that you get them on your tool bar.



TOOL BUTTON LOCATION
Open a file Location : 'File' / 'Open'
Crop Image Location : 'Image' / 'Crop'
Auto-enhance Contrast Location : 'Effects' / 'Enhance Photo' / Automatic-enhance Contrast
Auto Color Balance Location : 'Effects' / 'Enhance Photo' / Automatic Color Balance
Edge Preserving Smooth Location : 'Effects' / 'Noise' / 'Edge Preserving Smooth'
Clarify Location : 'Effects' / 'Enhance Photo' / 'Clarify'
Resize 'Image' / 'Resize'
JPEG Optimizer 'File' / 'Export' / 'JPEG Optimizer'

From here I will use an actual photo with screen shots as usual. I chose a photo that, hopefully, needs more help than most of yours will.

  • Click Open New File and browse to the photo you want to work on.

  • If you need to crop the photo do it now.
  • The first thing to get right is the contrast.
    Even if you are a good photographer there are too many variables between clicking the shutter and getting to this point to be right more than 50% of the time.
    This tool adjusts the contrasts in the photo for you. In this case the photo was taken on a very bleak day so we need to increase contrast and brighten the whole thing.
    The main adjustment is done with "Bias". You have three choices but it assesses the picture before making the alteration so that if you choose "Neutral" it may darken or lighten the picture depending on what it sees.
  • Next comes the color balance
    This is of great use if you want to change photos from artificial light to natural light or vice versa.
    In this case we would like to have the sea look blue and the sails a little less murky yellow.
    I normally use strength about 30% but this one needed a lot of help.
    Have fun sliding the color bar back and forth until you get what you want.
    The "Remove Color Cast" gives different results depending on the picture so try it off and on and choose the best result.
    This is a beginners tutorial so I will not get into the finer points but for those used to using layers think of using more than one copy layer and altering each one for a specific part of the picture. In this case I added some clouds from another picture but we can get into that later.

    • Finished picture.

    This is just part of what you can do so click HERE to carry on.

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