Chapter 3: The Basics of Image Editing

To many, image editing, or more specifically, the word Photoshop, conjures up ideas of fantastical landscapes, or of portraits of impossibly beautiful people retouched to the brink of plausibility, and beyond.

If you are not interested in taking your creativity into the realm of photo illustration, or image composites, you'll use photo editing to make your digital files look exactly like they appeared when the shutter button was first pressed.

But why would we need this sort of artificial aid in the first place? It's a frequently asked question, and the simple answer is that what we see is not always what our camera records. This is because we have a brain that can be very flexible when it comes to processing the visual information it receives from any scene, whereas a camera simply responds to the light it is pointed at—with essentially a rather limited ability to translate that information into a faithful, realistic reproduction of any scene.

I'm always reminded of a quote by 1960s fashion photographer David Bailey, who said the following:

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography, everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."

These are wise words, spoken a long time before retouching software came into being.

One of the biggest drawbacks of image editing is its apparent complexity. No one wants to spend hours slaving over a keyboard with little to show for their toil. In this chapter, you'll discover the basics of making your RAW (and JPEG) files look just as they were when you first pressed the shutter button.

But you'll also learn how to generate some very cool effects and creative looks, all with very little time and effort. That might leave you with extra time to go out and shoot more great pictures!

By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to transform your RAW files into something that better resembles a perfect picture using the tools and techniques covered in this chapter.

In this chapter, we'll look at the following topics:

• The editing workflow and best practices
• Ten ways to open an image in Elements
• How to edit RAW files, including a brief overview
• Working with Camera RAW's basic tools
• Working with Camera RAW's sharpening and noise reduction tools
• The Camera RAW toolbar
• Understanding picture resolution
• Cropping for better composition
• How the Crop tool works
• Straightening horizons
• Resampling: making pictures larger or smaller
• Instant photo fixes using the Organizer
• Saving files and Version Sets
• Using the auto tone-correction tools
• Mastering contrast, color, sharpness, and clarity
• Adjusting contrast using Levels
• Adjusting color using Hue/Saturation
• Creating high-impact black and white images
• Perfecting skin tone color
• Smoothing skin tone
• Simple retouching using the Spot Healing Brush tool
• Modifying facial expressions
• Open Closed Eyes—AI is used to replace closed eyes with open ones
• Additional resources