Digital photography has changed all of our lives and given us the ability to sit behind a computer monitor and be our own Ansel Adams with the post production.  But it's not that simple, there are several pieces of software to edit your photos with after you take them, the most well known being Photoshop.  There is a clear cut rival to Photoshop called GIMP, an open source software that is very similar to Photoshop, and some say better. Image by Rore 1. Starting with the most obvious and possibly most important, GIMP is free.  Yes free, no charge, nada, zip, zero.  Photoshop costs upwards of $700 for a single license!  The old saying stays true, if it's free it's for me. 2. GIMP is a much smaller install, about 20x smaller then Photoshop.  Not only does the install go much quicker, but it takes up far less hard drive making it the perfect image editing software for laptops and netbooks where hard drive space may be at a premium. 3. Photoshop is extremely resource intensive, it will run on older hardware but it's not optimized to and will be sluggish and slow.  GIMP on the other hand is amazingly fast and stable.  It ...

Taking portrait photographs is the main pastime of many amateur photographers and it can be very rewarding. A lot of people even venture into converting their digital portraits into black and white. This is where the results can become a little mixed. Luckily there is a little photography post production technique that you might be able to try. Here is one way we manage to get a little bit of extra detail into those black and white portraits. Step 1) Fire up Photoshop or GIMP and load up your colour portrait. We are using a photo of Joe Biden from the Whitehouse website for this tutorial. Save the image as joe1.jpg Step 2) Adjust the exposure setting of the image down 2 stops and save the image as joe2.jpg Step 3) Adjust the exposure setting of the original image up 2 stops and save the image as joe3.jpg You should now have three images that look something like these: Step 4) Open up a HDR program. You can get a free trial of most of them or newer versions of Photoshop also have HDR conversion capability. Just do a Google search. Step 5) Convert your three images into a HDR image and save it ...

So you have rushed out to shoot a landscape on a sunny day, and while you tried to remember the sunny f/16 rule, you forgot to take your gradient filter with you and you have some washed out skies in your shots. Fear not! All is not lost. Here is a quick and dirty way to fake a gradient filter in Photoshop. Step 1) Open your image in Photoshop. Step 2) Create a new layer. Step 3) Hit “G” to bring up the gradient bar. Step 4) In the gradient editor, select “white/black” Step 5) Draw the gradient. Step 6) In the layer properties window, select “Overlay” Step 7) In the Layer properties window, adjust the opacity to suit your tastes. Well, that’s about it. It’s quick. It’s nasty. And it can save your washed out skies when you’re in a bind.

There is always a lot of controversy surrounding digital manipulation of photos, but whether you are for or against it, it is a fact of life. Almost every professional image you have ever seen, going well back into the era of film cameras, has been manipulated in some way. With that in mind, I am always on the lookout for software that can help get reasonable results without taking hours or costing me my children’s college tuition. One of the recent tools I came across was Imagic Photo Enhancer [affiliate link]. How this photo went from drab to fab in about 20 seconds. Now, of course, the first thing I did was to go out and take some very average photos in poor conditions so I could put this software through its paces. The photos here are all taken at about midday on a particularly sunny day so there were all sorts of problems with exposure as you can see. Even so, I think I managed to save them without making them look overdone. Here’s another one: Now bear in mind, I have only been playing around with this software for less than an hour so I am not exactly an expert at it yet. But ...

Getting great results in black and white from a camera phone takes some skill. The rewards though, seem to be fantastic if you have the patience and time to devote to it. The real challenges in this photography niche lie in both composition and post production due mainly to the limitation of the medium. by Tomás Rotger by Johnnyphoto In general terms there are a few things you are going to want to think about when you are embarking on a quest to take great black and white photos with a camera phone. These are some of the more obvious ones: Abide By the General Rules of Photography - Just because you're planning on turning shots into black and white doesn't mean you can afford to take mediocre shots. Abide by general photography rules such as the rule of thirds and make sure your composition is good. Improving a good shot post-production is much better than saving a bad one. The limitations of a camera phone are large enough without magnifying them with poor initial images. Get Closer - I know we repeat this one a lot, but so few people take heed. You usually need to totally fill the frame of your shot with ...

Taking decent portraits with a camera phone is actually a very good opportunity to get cell phone photography right. In general, portrait photography is one of the types of photography where you control the vast majority of variables (unlike wildlife or action photography). Here are a few things you that you can control: Control the Light - If you are set up to take portrait shots of an acquanitance, then you probably have time to think about the light that you have to work with. If you are outside then consider where the natural light is going to come from and whther you need to reflect it. Inide, you have complete control. Stay Still - If you are taking traditional portrait shots, then you have the ability to make sure the camera phone is as stable as possible. Camera shake is one of the biggest factors that ruins shots with camera phone photography and in the situation of a portrait setup, you have the chance to minimise or eliminate this irritation. Consider a Macro - If you want to get really close, then you might like to invest in one of the phones that offers a macro lens. The Nokia even has an ...

Knowing how to properly calibrate your monitor can save any budding photographer a lot of heartache when it comes to getting an accurate idea of the colors in a photograph and how they might turn out after printing (or on other people's monitors). The fact is there can be a world of difference between the same photo shown on different monitors. Here's how to get your monitor properly calibrated so that you can be confident that you are seeing the correct image on your screen. 1) Screen Resolution - You are going to have to make sure that your screen resolution is at the maximum allowed. (Note: LCD monitors need to be set to native resolution. 2) Color Mode: Make sure your monitor is set to 24 bit mode. Just right click on your desktop in Windows and go to Graphic Properties to set it to 24 bit. Be sure to let your monitor warm up for a while after doing this and get it out of the sunlight. 3) Find a photo that you have taken during the day and print it out at the highest settings you printer has (the better your printer, the better this will process will work). 4) Adjust your ...

Learning how to do beautiful photography special effects can give a lot of enjoyment for some of us amateur photographers. The great thing is that many of the techniques that required a large investment in equipment only a few years ago, can now be replicated using a good digital editing program on a home computer. This list of tutorials from tilt shift photography through to HDR will hopefully show you that the world of special effects photography is not outside the bounds of the average amateur. In fact, a rich world of photo experimentation is right at the hands of anyone who has a camera, a computer and some patience. Tilt Shift Photography Tutorials Photo by JJJohn Tilt shift photography produces images that look almost like miniature model scenes. In fact, when you first see tilt shift images, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are looking at a scene from a model railway. Tutorials: Tilt Shift Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make Fake Miniature Scenes - Tilt Shift Photography Tutorial and Showcase Faking Tilt-Shift - a Tutorial for Realistic Miniaturised Photos Tilt Shift Photography Tutorial Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial Lomo Photography Tutorials Photo by Klaire Lee. Lomo photography has a massive worldwide following due to the success of the original Russian state-run ...