Edit Your Digital Photos - Getting The Most Out Of Photoshop

Create depth of field: You can quite easily add depth of field to the images that you have taken "snaps" of. If you have an image that is completely in focus and the background too is in focus (a common effect of non SLR digital point and shoot cameras) the you can solve this using Photoshop. You simply draw a mask or make a selection around the subject, invert that mask so that it selects all but the subject and apply a blur effect to the part of the image that is selected. In the later versions of Photoshop there is actually a filter that emulates the natural lens blur. The end result is a sharp, in focus subject with an out of focus background. This can be very effective and can draw attention to the subject.

Where is Picture Manager? To open Picture Manager, on the Start menu, point to All Programs, then to Microsoft Office, and then to Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Picture Manager. The AutoCorrect command fixes brightness, color, and contrast. It can also crop, rotate or flip and resize the picture. Microsoft Office Picture Manager is the Microsoft Office System 2003 tool you can use to manage, edit, and share your pictures. Picture Manager works with a variety of file formats, including: .jpg, .gif, and .bmp.

The editing programs today can do wonders to images. One of the most popular programs is Adobe PhotoShop, since this editing program is one of the most sophisticated tools. Most pro photographers will use this program, since you can create websites, book covers, images, movies, and more. Adobe is also used to design manuals, graphics, commercials, fliers, and more. This particular program I miss. I lost my copy during a severe virus attack, and the downside is it costs around $1000 to $1500 to replace. Outside of lightning effects, you can also setup brick backgrounds, or whatever background you choose. If you own this program you know what I am talking about, however if you have never had the experience and can get the opportunity to try out Adobe I promise you will have loads of fun.

But what good is that going to do if you're used to the Photoshop interface? Nothing. In a nutshell, Photoshop is for linear thinkers, and Gimp is for lateral thinkers. Both of them can arrive at very nearly the same result, so close that it's a neck and neck race. Bottom line, for website graphics and simple editing jobs it's almost insane to spend the money to use Photoshop. And Gimp is likewise inadequate for the needs of a professional print shop. Go ahead, give Gimp a try. You have nothing to loose, and its free!

The Photoshop plug-ins which are available can help perform tasks much faster and more efficiently than performing these tasks by hand. The 3D plug-ins are used to create 3D images and type very quickly and elegantly. The color management Photoshop plug-ins can create new colors to correspond to the printer that you are using, or the monitor that you are using to create your graphics. The digital asset management plug-ins are used to organize all of the digital images that you have created so that finding the correct image is much easier than without it. The photographic ones give many different professional lens techniques that you can apply to any picture to create amazing effects.

Opacity is very straight forward. This option is found in the upper-right-hand corner of the Layers palette. It ranges from 0 - 100% opacity, and is very useful when working with adjusting color, sharpness, or any other adjustment.

Photoshop is a wonderful tool for creating web sites. It allows even a novice the ability to create a fully functional web site without much knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. You can create an entire web page template with Photoshop, and then use Image Ready to slice up the image and create the HTML for you. Or you can use Photoshop to create just the navigation for your web site, or to optimize images on your web site. No matter how you use Photoshop, it will definitely make your web site look much nicer, and also help it to run faster.