Mark Justice Hinton - Editing Digital Photos for Dummies

Editing Digital Photos For Dummies, Pocket Edition

by Mark Justice Hinton, Barbara Obermeier,and Doug Sahlin

Editing Digital Photos For Dummies, Pocket Edition

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Copyright 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN: 978-1-118-03784-3; ISBN:978-1-118-03785-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Introduction

S mile! Everybody say cheese.

Photographs freeze a moment in time forever. Even an underexposed, out-of-focus photo may affect you as strongly as the finest photo art. Photographs fascinate and entertain. People like photos.

Whether you use a cell phone camera or a top-of-the-line professional model, the widespread availability of digital cameras has energized popular photography. At any moment triumphant or embarrassing you can be ready to capture the scene.

Some things about photography havent changed with digital technology. Your pictures have a subject and a frame. You can compose your photo by following guidelines that go back farther than anyone reading this book can remember. However, digital photography has brought a few radical changes to photography:

Photos are immediately accessible and shareable no more delayed gratification

Photos last forever digital never fades or curls

Technology makes things easy that used to be impossible by enabling you to stop action and capture great details

The phrase point and shoot promises an ease of use that most digital cameras deliver. But this simplicity also brings new challenges, such as what to do with the 20,000 digital photos stashed on your hard drive.

Your cameras Automatic mode almost guarantees that youll take adequate photos under most circumstances. That mode leaves some room for improvement in your shots, however. Your camera has more sophisticated modes and settings, and this book tells you what they are and how to use them.

After the shot has been captured, you can still do more with the photo. A few simple edits can transform a photo from okay to Wow! You can share your snapshots or art with the world or with just a few friends.

About This Book

Taking good photographs does not require you to be exceptionally talented or studious. Neither should your photographs force your friends to yawn and make excuses to avoid looking at 300 similar shots from your vacation. The goal of this book is to help you enjoy taking pictures and to help you experiment with all the features of your camera, as well as to deal with your photos after the shot.

This book provides an overview that takes you from buying a camera to taking easy photos, to better photos, to sharing your photos. Along the way, we provide enough depth to help you gain confidence in your photographic endeavors. You wont find any long-winded lectures here (Lens Caps: Impediment or Opportunity?), but you will find helpful step-by-steps and friendly advice from folks with a lot of experience with digital cameras.

In this book, you discover

How to move pictures to your computer

How to organize your photos

How to remove red-eye

How to make easy, effective edits

Whom This Book Is For

You may already have your first digital camera, or you may be ready to get a new one and are looking for some guidance on what type of digital camera to buy. Perhaps you want to take advantage of your cameras automatic functions, but youre curious about what else your camera can do. If you want to find out the essentials of digital photography from choosing a camera to printing your photos, and all the steps in between this book is for you.