By John Woram
(October 15, 2004)

Back in 1988, Elton John sang the words, "You can't argue with the image. The camera never lies." The camera still doesn't lie, but you can argue with what it says if the truth hurts. Here's a quick look at five common photographic truths you may wish to bend, with the help of a widely used photo-editing application, Adobe Photoshop Elements. We used version 2.0, but you can see a preview of version 3.0 here.

How to perfect your pictures

Before you get started with this project, we recommend that you have the following:

How to perfect your pictures

Often when you're framing an image, you don't think about the positioning of background elements and how they end up attaching themselves to your subject. The lamppost growing out of the woman's head is a perfect example. Adobe Photoshop Elements and most other editing packages have a tool that can duplicate nearby background information over the item you want to remove. It's referred to as cloning.

To amputate the lamppost, select Element's Clone Stamp tool, hold down Alt, place the tool over the area you want to clone (in this case, the horizon to the left of the lamppost), and click to select that location. Release Alt and drag the cursor, which is now just a circle, across the lamp. The previously selected location is cloned over the lamp and replaced with sky and landscape. Proceed carefully until you've cloned the globe out of the sky. Then go back and clone away the section over the hills by repeating the Alt+click+drag procedure.

Use the left or right bracket keys to adjust the size of the cloning brush.

How to perfect your pictures

Had a tiff with Uncle Bob? Maybe it's time to extricate him from some family photos; you can always save the original if you kiss and make up later. In our example, we used the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the woman in black. We included some of the area surrounding her, then hit copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) to create a new layer containing just the selected area. Using the Move tool, we dragged the new layer to the left, using the distant shoreline as a guide while moving it into position. For the moment, the lady in pink has lost her left arm, but that's easy to fix. In the Layers palette, we temporarily hid the new layer by clicking the eye at the left. Next, we highlighted the background layer, selected the Magic Wand tool, and clicked in the general vicinity of the woman's left arm. With Adobe's little "marching ants" parading around most of the area in pink and nowhere else, we turned the layer back on, selected it, and pressed Ctrl+X. This erases only the segment of the new layer that falls within that previously selected area on the background layer. In other words, we selected an area on one layer, then used it to erase an area on the other.

Next, we used the Eraser tool to remove any leftovers from the old layer, including Bob's hand on the lady in black's left shoulder. (For close work, zoom in on the image.) If parts of Uncle Bob's head were to reappear (remember, he's still there on that background layer), we could just use the clone tool on that layer to behead him. Finally, use the Crop tool to trim away the original lady in black on the right (unless you're going for a twin-sister effect).

When using the Marquee tool, if too much or not enough area is selected, adjust the Tolerance setting (about 50 percent should do it) and try again.

How to perfect your pictures

If you've just come back from the great outdoors only to discover your images have a bluish tinge, chances are you took some indoor shots earlier and forgot to change the camera to daylight exposure when you went outside. To chase those blues away, try your luck with Enhance > Auto Color Correction. It often does an excellent job all by itself, but if not, undo the correction by pressing Ctrl+Z, then scroll down to Adjust Color and select the Color Cast option. A Color Cast Correction dialog box appears, and the cursor becomes an eyedropper. Just click the eyedropper over an area that's supposed to be a neutral shade (white, gray, or black). Do a bit of experimenting, and if things don't work out, just press the Reset button and try again.

For more fine-tuning, try the Color Variations option within the Adjust Color submenu.

How to perfect your pictures

An overly busy background distracts from the foreground, but now and then a background isn't busy enough, as in this photo of a Buenos Aires tomb seen against an empty blue sky. We needed to send in some clouds to add a bit of interest, and in this case, it was easy. We strolled outdoors when the cloud cover was just right and took a nice picture of the sky. We opened both files, selected the cloud photo, chose the Move tool, and dragged it over to the other image, creating a new layer on top of the original background layer. The Layers palette shows both layers, labeled Background and Layer 1. We clicked the Background layer and selected Layer > Duplicate Layer to create a Background Copy layer.

Next, we dragged the Background Copy layer up on the palette so that it was above the cloud layer. Using the Magic Eraser tool (hold the mouse down over the Eraser tool), we clicked areas of solid blue sky until it all disappeared to reveal the cloud layer. Finally, we used the Move tool to slide the cloud layer around until it looked just right.

As a further enhancement, with the Background Copy layer selected, choose the Sponge tool, set the Mode to Saturate, and paint over the angel a few times to enhance the color.

How to perfect your pictures

A file that's the right size to deliver a high-quality print is definitely the wrong size to post on the Web or send via e-mail. A 3,000x2,000-pixel JPEG image, for instance, may be about 3MB. If you print it at 300 pixels per inch, you'll get a nice 10-inch-wide print. But if you send it via e-mail, the recipient will have to view it in an image-editing application to be able to see the entire image on even the largest monitor. To spare your audience some grief, select Image > Resize > Image Size and change the width to, say, 600 pixels (with Constrain Proportions checked, the height automatically changes to 400 pixels, retaining the original's width/height ratio). Rename the new image so that the original is still available for archiving and printing.

The resized image will now be viewable, and the file size is probably less than one-tenth of the original's. To reduce the file size even further, select File > Save For Web. You'll see two side-by-side images, with the original on the left. Set the quality to zero and note the file size shown below the image. If the image quality is not acceptable, move the quality slider gradually to the right until it is. When you reach an acceptable setting, the file size will still be lower than before, and your recipients will still be your friends.