Go with the Grain: How to Make Bad Photos Picture Perfect

**The following article was written by guest contributor, Emily Powers.**

That the stuff of our lives—ordinary and extraordinary—is captured for later memory replay and documented for posterity.

In every batch of pictures, there is always a handful of bad photos. What do you do with them? Do they take up space on your hard drive? Do you agonize as you hit delete and watch your virtual trashcan fill up with happy-snaps-gone-bad? Most of the time it’s okay; the good makes up for the bad. But every so often, you plug-in your memory card and your heart sinks. There’s a really special photo with a major problem. Never fear! Emily’s easy photo fixes are here!

HELP: My photo is too dark!

1. Open up your photo in Photoshop.
2. From the Menu, Select Layer and then Duplicate Layer.
3. On the Layers Palette, change the Blending Mode from Normal to Screen.
4. Adjust the Opacity of the Duplicated Layer as needed. Be careful how much you lighten the image; the grain and noise will increase noticeably with excessive lightening.

HELP: My photo has a weird color cast!

1. Open up your photo in Photoshop.
2. From the Menu, Select Image, Adjustments and then Hue/Saturation.
3. From the Drop Down Edit Box, choose the color you want to eliminate or soften. In the case of the sample photo below, I want to get rid of the blue color cast. So, I’ve chosen Blues from the Drop Down Edit Box.
4. Play with the Hue, Saturation and Lightness sliders until you achieve the look you desire. For the sample photo my settings are Hue +10, Saturation +10, Lightness +40.

HELP: How do I get rid of distractions in my photo?

1. Open up your photo in Photoshop.
2. Select the Clone Stamp Tool (it’s the fourth one down in the left-hand column of the Tools Palette).
3. Select a Soft Mechanical Brush in the appropriate size to remove your distraction. Mode Normal, Opacity 100%, Flow 100%, Aligned Checked.
4. ALT + click to select the area you would like to clone. Then move to the distraction and click to cover up the distraction with the cloned area. In the case of the sample photo below, I went over the wrinkles in the poodle skirt over and over again with the clone tool to soften and eliminate them.

GO WITH THE GRAIN TIPS:

1. Go RAW. If you have a digital SLR camera, experiment with the RAW file format. The RAW file format is digital photography’s equivalent of a negative in film photography. Shooting in the RAW file format offers you more post processing control and flexibility.
2. Study your camera manual! It’s not fun to wade through the technical jargon, but instead of fixing bad photos AVOID them! Get comfortable with your camera and learn how to capture a creatively correct exposure in any situation.
3. Invest in quality photo editing software. Photoshop Elements is an economical place to start for post processing newbies!

GO WITH THE GRAIN ASSIGNMENT:

Set aside 30 minutes this week to try out Emily’s easy photo fixes. More importantly, reflect on how you could have altered your capture in order to avoid the problem. Reference your camera manual for exposure help if needed.