Learn How To Make Your Photos Shine

How to print your digital photosYou would think that printing is easy. You just go to your closest photo shop and give them the memory card and they'll print it for you. Or you could buy a good photo printer (not so expensive these days), plug in the camera and press print.Yes, it sounds pretty easy. But, your digital photos can be truly enhanced through a little bit of work and imagination. From the same file, you can print completely different pictures.You can print this photo of some geese:or, do some work and frame this funny print:You can print this photo from your Toronto vacation:or you can print these two photos, frame them and hang them on the wall: (REMEMBER: the photos below come from the same picture)There's a great level of satisfaction to post your own pictures on the wall. Your friends will ask you where from did you bought that frame on your wall, and you'll proudly say: I did that myself on my last vacation. Also, the vacation memories will be right there on the wall every time you pass by, instead of being in an album on the book shelf.The good news is that doing these small alterations is a very simple task. Everyone can do it.Resolution"How many mega pixels do I really need for my purposes" - is a quite common question. The following table provides an overview of megapixels in relation to common print sizes. A print resolution of 300dpi corresponds to magazine quality. "Acceptable" prints don't require 300dpi but e.g. 2MP will not scale to something like 20x30cm without a severe loss of quality.MegaResolution common print size (~ 300dpi)pixels2 MP 1600x1200 10x13cm / 4x6"3 MP 2048x1536 13x18cm / 5x7"4 MP 2400 x 1600 18x23cm / 6x8"6 MP 3000x2000 20x30cm / 7x10"8 MP 3600x2400 30x40cm / 10x14"If you just want 4x6" pictures and you own a 3 mega pixel or better camera, you could crop a window of 1600x1200 out of the large file coming from your camera, and you would still get a very good quality print. That means that if you have an 8 mega pixel camera, you could print a quarter of your image on a 4x6" and you would still get a very good quality print.This can be very useful if you try to print a portrait from a large picture or if you want to remove some unwanted tree branches, wires or people from a picture.Tools:A good software program for editing pictures is Adobe Photoshop. You can do amazing things with this software. But for minor alterations like the examples above you could use other smaller software applications that you can find in your local "Best-Buy" store. Or if you have one, you can even use the software provided with your camera.My favorite: ACDSee Photo Editor. The ACDSee Pro package is the most complete tool for photo managing and editing.Let's Start:1. CroppingCropping is the simplest operation to be done to a picture. By cropping a picture, you can remove the unwanted details that entered the picture or bring focus on a person or a detail.Here's the original picture:Here is the cropping process in ACDSee Photo EditorHere's the final result:The cropping was used in this case to remove the grass and the stone on the left and also the body of the second tiger on the right. The most important thing to remember when doing the cropping is the aspect ratio of the print that we want. If the final picture is not the correct ratio, the shop will cut some more to fit it in the print, or will leave an unwanted white band on the sides or on the top and bottom. On a 4x6" print, the ratio should be 2/3.2. Adjusting Levels/ColorsThe next step would be to adjust the levels and the colors. Some of the software's (most of them these days), will offer the possibility to do AutoLevels or AutoExposure. Because they are Auto Modes, they work based on algorithms. They may output good results for some pictures but most of the time it will ruin it in my opinion. My recommendation is to do the adjustments manually.ACDSee Photo Editor and most of the software editing programs work with histograms. A histogram is a graphic representation of therange of tones from dark to light in a photo. The representation is done on different channel (Red, Green, Blue, Luminance). For the case of adjusting levels, we'll use the channel Luminance.See below the cropped picture of the tiger with its histogram.After adjusting the Midtones, the picture will look much brighter and clear.See the next steps and how will the original picture turn like the picturebelow at:Other information on the website:-find out how you can get over 100 FREE prints of your own photography-find out how you can sell your digital pictures。