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Photographing Fall Foliage Capture the majesty of fall's colors with your digital camera. From "The Whole Picture" episode DTWP-204

(Continued from page 3)

Erin instructs her student on how to digitally enhance the color and sharpness of photos.

Digital Darkroom: Enhancing Color With Photo Editing Software

While you may have some pictures with good composition and interesting lighting, you might think the color needs to be enhanced before they're ready for printing.

Note: For this "digital darkroom" exercise, Erin used Adobe Photoshop image-editing software, so these instructions are based on the current version of that program and its interface. Other image-editing software packages typically offer similar capabilities and functions, though the interface and menu choices may be different.

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	Before. . .
	...and after. Photo editing software was used to enhance the highlights and color saturation.

• After you've archived your original, simply go the menu bar and click on Enhance, then scroll down to Adjust color and then over to Color variations.

• This will open a color variations window which will allow you to see your changes as you make them with "before" and "after" images right next to each other. The options available in this window will allow you to control the various colors as well as the mid-tones, shadows, saturation and highlights.
  
  
• Tip: For photographs of fall foliage, consider increasing the reds to get great color. Also, try increasing your shadows and see what you get.

• Just play with the variables until you get an image you're happy with. Have fun! Experiment!

• You also may want to sharpen your image. You always want to do this at the end of the editing process because it can degrade your image a little bit. The sharpen tool "tricks" your eyes into thinking the image is sharper by just increasing the contrast of the pixels. To sharpen your images, go up to the menu bar and click on Filters, then scroll down to Sharpen.

  Note: You may be able to use the sharpen feature a couple of times with good results, but you should avoid using it too many times on a particular picture as it will eventually degrade the image.

Once you're pleased with your results, Save your image and Print it out.

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RESOURCES :

Photo and image editing software used in DIY's The Whole Picture demonstrations:
Adobe® Photoshop Elements 3®
www.adobe.com