Manipulative-Witch.com

Post shoot manipulation ...Why it's a good idea

Most digital cameras have built in effects but once you have played around to get used to your camera.. personally I'd forget about them. Not only are they limited but you instantly reduce your ability to manipulate the images later. If you take your image in black and white mode; you cant make it color later, but you can take a color photo and make it black and white very easily in Paint Shop Pro or other graphic sofware. Manipulating post shoot gives you the ability to take one picture and get a dozen different images add in all of the other cool stuff you can do to images and you could fill an album from one shot and a bit of imagination.

The other main reason for post shoot manipulation is that almost every single shot really needs to be sharpened afterwards, its just one of those things. Now I personally used to just use the sharpen tools till a friend of mine showed me the unsharp mask too... all I can say is WOW.. so much more control.

Just to show you some of the simple ideas I am going to take this picture and show you a bunch of images taken from that one shot, and then you will understand why I say don't use on board effects and constantly remind people don't overwrite your originals.

These are subtle changes .. there are so many ways to manipulate photo's.. you just have to experiment..only you know what you like and what will work with your images. Don't cut your own throat before you start by limiting what you can and can't do. You can color a black and white image, but its time consuming and never as realistic as a color photo.

shot1 - Original image
shot2 - Water effect & unsharp mask
shot3 - Sepia tone added
shot4 - Black & White
shot5 - Simple close crop
shot6 - Close crop, water effect & colorisation
shot7 - Cropped for portrait orientation
shot8 - Cropped for panoramic layout.

Even a bad picture has potential when you know how to manipulate and there will be times you wished you hadn't dumped those bad pics. How about when you need an image for the website forums or instant messenger programs for avatars. I think we have all had those shots where we look great but wish we'd sucked it in a bit or weren't posed so badly.. well hell.. off with her head I say !!! crop it tight and its the perfect passport pic; lumps, bumps, beer bellies and stretchmarks.... totally hidden.

Add in some cropping, cloning, funky text and you have yourself a new website logo, banner, business card or whatever project you have in mind.

Programs like Paint Shop Pro come with built in filters and there are so many addon plugins available you'll have a blast playing arond with them.

Some of my favorites are:-

SPGWebtools
Blade Pro
Virtual Painter
KPT
Eye Candy
Andrews

most come with either a few freebies or trial versions so you can download and try them out... they usually leave a marker to say its a sample though.. but it will give you a good idea of what is available.

For websites there are some fun applets you can try out too..

Anfy