Four tricks to quickly touch up your photographs

Because today's cameras use memory cards large enough to hold thousands of pictures, many amateurs settle for quantity over quality in their photography. As a result, the world is filled with good photography that, with just a little bit of touch-up work, could be great.

While touch-up work may seem time consuming, a few steps can benefit virtually any picture, take only a few seconds and make a world of difference in how a picture looks. Follow these tips when going through your pictures, and you'll have digital photography that you'll be proud to show off:

Blemishes

Blemishes can include anything from reflections to scars to acne. With a little bit of practice and photography training, almost any blemish can be completely removed in just a few minutes without leaving a trace.

Tool: Clone or stamp tool

Things to remember: While the clone tool is useful, it can easily be overdone. Choose your spots carefully and don't turn your subject into an alien just because you're trying to retouch every single blemish. Also, most professionals are careful about removing permanent blemishes like moles, wrinkles, scars and birthmarks. Some refuse to remove or soften these blemishes even a little, while others ask the subject first.

Unwanted objects

The perfect photograph can be ruined by a single unwanted object. Fortunately, today's photo editing software makes it easy to remove distractions through both the crop tool and the clone stamp.

Tool: Crop or clone stamp

Things to remember: If you're proficient with today's photo editing tools, you don't have to give up on any picture. Even if you think that you've taken the perfect photograph, experiment with the crop tool to put a stronger focus on your subject. Make sure you photograph using a high resolution, so you can crop a significant portion of the photograph and still maintain a high resolution.

Imperfect lighting

Lighting can be one of the toughest things for a photographer to control. While severe lighting problems are tough to fix after the picture has been taken, levels and filters can be effective at turning a poorly lit picture into a good - or even a great - photograph.

Tool: Levels or hue/saturation

Things to Remember: One mistake many amateur photographers make is learning graphic design software like Photoshop at the same time they learn photography. This often leads to them taking sloppy pictures because they know they can retouch them in Photoshop. Because lighting is so hard to get right after a picture is taken, it is important that you make sure you take a picture with the right type of lighting and correct exposure so you'll have to do as little touchup work as possible.

Wrong size

One part of the photograph retouching process that often goes overlooked is the picture's size. Depending on how the photograph is going to be used, its size matters a great deal. For example, photos uploaded on the Internet need to be greatly reduced in resolution and size to load quickly, while photos that are going to be printed should remain at maximum resolution.

Tool: Transform or resize

Things to remember: If you're combining several pictures together, consider reducing the resolution of some of the pictures. This will keep the size of your files reasonable enough for your computer to handle, even if your processor is not exceptionally fast.

Information in this article was provided by IADT - Nashville. Contact IADT - Nashville today if you're interested in developing marketable knowledge and career-relevant skills with an industry-current degree program. (IADT - Nashville does not guarantee employment or salary.)

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