How to Enhance Digital Pictures in Two Easy Steps

Editing digital photos to make them look more like the view you saw through the camera lens isn't difficult. Photo editing software will do the work for you. All you have to do - and this is the tricky part - is select the right correction tool from the software's menus.

I use two free digital image editors for almost all my photo editing: Irfanview (irfanview.com) has simple photo editing features that I use for almost all of my photos on Associated Content. My other choice, the GIMP (gimp.org) image editor, gives me more control over the corrections but it's not quite as easy to use.

Look at Illustration One. It's a mediocre digital image of a lion statue at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The lion is what photographers call "washed out" or overexposed. The detail of the statue's weathered marble isn't apparent, and the shadows aren't as distinct as they could be. It was my mistake: I set the exposure wrong.

A novice would adjust the contrast and the brightness controls in an attempt to improve the picture. This, unfortunately, makes equal changes to the shadows and highlights as well as to the mid-range tones you want to enhance. The trees are already dark enough, and the lion doesn't need to be more washed-out than he is already. Instead of the brightness and contrast adjustments, you need to adjust the mid-range tones, then enhance the detail. These controls are usually called "Gamma correction" and "Sharpening" or "Unsharp Mask".

Using Irfanview:

From the menu bar, select Image/ Enhance Colors/ and a dialog box will appear. You need to use the Gamma Correction (it's in the right-hand pane of the control window) Grab the "Gamma Correction" slider with your mouse and slide it back and forth. Watch what happens. The whole image will lighten and darken, but the middle tones will be affected more than the highlights and shadows. Drag the slider until you are happy with the results.