INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL DARK ROOM

29th June, 2017

Digital technology has opened many doors for photographer to express their creativity intuitively. It has presented the artist with a wide spectrum of fine control which can be harnessed in the image-making process to achieve effective result. It has also made the process of making and sharing image exciting. This digital darkroom is designed to advance your photographic process, empowering you with an understanding of the digital darkroom along with useful insights that are integral to the process of making great photographs that let you express your unique vision.
Basic requirement: Photoshop should be installed in your system.

1. How to open a picture in Photoshop.

Option 1: drag and drop the picture to be opened editing panel.
Option 2: right click on any picture and choose option” Open with Photoshop”.
Option 3: open Photoshop software->file->open->chooses (select the picture which you want to open in Photoshop editing panel for editing purpose).

2. Cropping images

1. Choose the crop tool (#) in the toolbox. Then click and drag across the image. An outline will appear that shows you the area to be cropped.
.2 adjusts the area to be cropped by using handle on the image.
2. Press enter to crop or escape to cancel.

3. Adjusting brightness/ contrast:

Sometimes picture you take do not come out the way you want them to. They may be too light or for your tastes. To make picture more visually pleasing. Sometimes it is necessary to adjust the brightness the brightness of picture.

Contrast is defined as the separation between the darkness and brightest areas of the image increase contrast and you increase the separation between dark and bright. Making shadows darker and highlights brighter. Decrease contrast and you bring the shadows up and the highlights down to make them closer to one another. Adding contrast adds ‘pop’ and makes an image look more vibrant while decreasing contrast can make an image look duller .
The levels command (image>adjust>levels) is an excellent tool for adjusting brightness /contrast there are two sets of sliders , one for brightness and another for contrast . Move the sliders to adjust the brightness and contrast in left or right direction as per your requirement.
For brightness slider
if you move the sliders towards left, it will make the picture darker.
If you move the slider towards right, it will make the picture brighter.
To move the adjustment, click OK to cancel it, click cancel.

4. Level adjustment: level adjustment is another option to adjust the right exposure (brightness/contrast) to your picture.

5. Saving and renaming the edited picture: it is very important to save the picture you have edited without spoiling the original picture.

To save the edited pictures do as follows:
File ->save as-> file name (rename your file as per your need)->Formatting(jpeg)->save.
Note: the above process will keep the original picture safe and make a duplicate copy of the renamed edited picture.