Do you have digital images that just don't look right? Pictures often get faded, or gain a reddish or bluish hue. You can fix these imperfections simply using editing software like PaintShop Pro. After reading these steps, you should be a pro at applying simple editing effects to your own digital images.
1- Lets get your settings in place. Once you have opened up Paint Shop, you will see a gray bar that spans the width of your software window (under the choices for 'File', 'Edit', etc). Right click on this gray bar and scroll down to the option "Toolbars". To the left of "Toolbars" will be choices for which tools you want to have open in that gray space. Click on "photo", and those editing options should appear. To find out what each icon in the toolbar does, just hover your mouse over the icon.
2- Make sure your image is rotated correctly! It's really hard to edit a photo when you don't have the right perspective on what it is. The easiest way to do this is to open the image that needs to be rotated. On your top tool bar you will find three icons in a row containing blue and white shapes, with arrows directing which way they are being rotated. These are your rotation tools. Just click on the direction that your image needs to be rotated. You will keep your image open for the rest of the editing process.
3- Next, let's take a look at your contrast/brightness. No one wants a photo that looks faded or soft. To make you images look more crisp, you will want to adjust the Contrast/Brightness of your photo. The Contrast/Brightness tool takes the blacks and whites in your images and enhances them. The icon is of a triangle, where the top is a light blue, and the bottom of it is black. Click on the icon, and a window will pop up requiring you to fill in numbers for both the contrast level, and the brightness level. If your image is really dark, start out by setting your levels both to 10, then press 'OK'. Repeat until you get your desired results. If the brightness of your picture is fine, but you just want it to look a little more crisp, set your contrast number to 10, and your brightness number to 0. Again, you will want to press 'OK' and repeat until you attain your desired results. To preview what your effects are going to look like, just press the icon that looks like an eye, which is in the 'Contrast/Brightness' window. If you like what you see, press 'OK'. If you don't like the selections you've made, simply press the eye again, which will hide the preview, and re-configure your settings.
4- Now we are going to focus on color. There are several ways to adjust the color on your images, but this technique is a manual tool where you can choose exactly what you want to be applied to your picture. The 'Adjust Color Balance' tool is a triangle that is light blue on top, and black on bottom, with a halo containing red and blue squares on the tip of the triangle. Click on this icon, and a window will pop up. Set your 'Tone Balance' to 'Midtones', and check the box beneath to 'Preserve luminance'. You will find that there are three scroll lines to adjust the color. You can either manually enter numbers in the white boxes, or you can manually move the cursor left or right to select how much you want to adjust a certain color. For instance, if your image has taken on a reddish hue, you will move the cursor between the choices 'cyan' and 'red' to the left, towards 'cyan'. This will add more cyan hues to your image, decreasing the amount of red that appears. A lot of color balancing is trial and error. To preview what your effects are going to look like, just press the icon that looks like an eye, which is in the 'Adjust Color Balance' window. If you like what you see, press 'OK'. If you don't like the selections you've made, simply press the eye again, which will hide the preview, and re-configure your settings.
Now your image looks as good as new. Have scratches, wrinkles, or writing on your images? You will need to use the 'cloning' tool to fix this, which is a whole other ball game! Check out tutorials on using the clone tool in PaintShop to make your editing skills complete.
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