iPhoto editing features can make an ordinary photo extraordinary

This is the next installment in the iPhoto series.

One of my cats, Cordelia, agreed to help out with this post. Gorgeous as the subject is, the image is a bit dull; there’s not much color and the background could have been better. And, I unfortunately cut off the tip of her right ear. But she is worthy of rescuing with iPhoto!

Before I begin I’ll make a copy of the image.

Open the special effects windows

In this iPhoto edit we’ll combine a few special effects features. So, select Edit and open both the Effects and Adjust options.

Move the special effects windows to either side of the image so you can see the changes as you edit. The editing sliders in the Adjust window are all at the default settings and you should already see the special features from the thumbnails in the Effects window.

Adjust the levels to brighten the image

Adjusting the levels is always my first step when editing. Sometimes a slight levels adjustment is all a photo needs. The left-hand slider controls the darker tones and the right-hand slider controls the lighter tones while the middle slider helps to balance the brightness and shadow. Play around with the settings to see which best suits your image. I moved each slider for this image. I also slightly increased the Exposure (to 0.24) and bumped up the Contrast (to 20)

See the difference these changes have already made. The background is more washed out and Cordelia is more prominent.

But, we can do more.

A tiny retouch

In the original photo do you see the tiny blemish under Cordelia’s right eye? It looks like I took the photo before she had finished grooming. Using the Retouch tool, I moved the slider to roughly the size of the blemish and simply clicked over the spot to remove it. Much tidier.

OK, let’s adjust those settings.

Add some warmth and saturate the colors

The Temperature slider can cool down or warm up your picture. In this instance, we want a bit of warmth so I moved the slider to the right (set to 6.5). This has changed the colour of her eyes to the correct shade of gold. The picture still needs some more color so I slid the Saturation to the right (up to 61). To remove a bit of the darkness on the fur I moved the Shadow slider up (to 6.1).

Each change is small but significant.

A crop and a matte finish

Cordelia’s is looking slightly more reddish than she should be (well, she is a Chocolate British Shorthair after all, not a Reddish British Shorthair) so even though her eyes are now a more true to life colour, I added a slight Tint (to 9.8) to tone down the reddish fur and bring out more of the chocolate color.

Now to the Effects window, I selected Matte. Then a slight Crop to finish. Why the crop after the matte and not before? I did try it that way but the crop was too tight and the matte finish covered part of the cat in white. So I added the matte and then did a couple of crops to get it just right. Having said that, the matte does help disguise the fact that the tip of her right ear was clipped.

Et voila!

If you have other iPhoto tips you’d like to share let us know in the comments. If you’d like to write a guest post about using iPhoto then get in touch with me via the Contact Form.

A curves adjustment can dramatically change the look of your photo

I took this photo the other day on my way home from work.

This friendly fellow was hanging about with his horse pals under the tree in the background to the right. That was going to be my composition, some horses crowding into the shadows of the tree to escape the glare of the sun. But as soon as the horses saw me at the fence they decided to come over and say ‘Neigh‘.

I had the camera on auto settings, the only change I made was to set the macro. Being a lovely rural area I wanted to give it a more country feel. The result ended up looking quite ‘retro’. So, “Bring out the GIMP!” and let’s get started.

A quick word about GIMP

I have written previously about the GIMP here. GIMP is similar to Photoshop but it’s free. You can find out more about it and download your own copy at the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:

• How to install GIMP on Mac OSX

Saturate the colours

The first thing I did was a quick auto-levels adjustment at Colors -> Levels -> Auto. Then I bumped up the saturation at Colors -> Hue-Saturation and moved the saturation slider up to 50.

Now for the curves adjustment.

Go crazy with curves

I’m relatively new to curves and have recently been experimenting with the color channels. I followed the advice at Layers magazine on boosting the individual RGB color channels.

See the difference each change makes to the image:

Red color channel

Green color channel

Blue color channel

Tighten the image with a crop

A quick crop, making sure to keep the fly-away hair of the mane intact.

Almost done. The image is now too saturated so back to Colors -> Hue-Saturation and move the saturation slider down to -20. Experiment with the different saturation and curves settings for the best results.

Et voila! Click the image above to view it at a larger size in Flickr.

Save your image

I have been saving the image in the its native GIMP .xcf format and then saving a .jpg copy to load to Flickr. To save it as a .jpg or .png etc go to Image -> Flatten image and then choose File -> Save As …

Related posts

• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP
• How to resize an image in iPhoto
• Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
• Use the tools in iPhoto to edit your images

Always make a copy of your original image before adding special effects.

Quick tip

To make a copy of your photo before you start post processing use the Duplicate option located on the toolbar under Photos or by selecting Cmd+D.

But iPhoto won’t let me click ‘duplicate’

Making a copy of an image can sometimes seem tricky as the Duplicate option isn’t always ‘clickable’. This is because you can’t perform this action when you select an image from a Smart Album.

I recently discovered this after I sorted all my photos into various Smart Albums. Using Smart Albums is an excellent way to organise photos, but because it’s not a real album (they are based on criteria you specify such as keywords) some options are not available to use.

So, if you find you can’t duplicate an image make sure you are not in a Smart Album. Simply browse to the image from a regular album or from the Photo Library option.

GIMP has almost as many features as Photoshop but it doesn’t cost the earth.

I visited the Leuralla Toy and Railway Museum the other week and took this photo of an old warning sign.

It’s amusing but it needs some work, right? Being an old-fashioned sign I wanted to add a vintage feel to it. I also wanted to bring out the red in the paint to exaggerate the warning itself. This is where you can yell “Bring out the GIMP!”

Before exporting the image from iPhoto I gave did a quick crop and straighten.

That’s better.

Saturate and contrast

Next, I opened the image in GIMP and selected Colors -> Hue-Saturation and increased the saturation to 100. I also selected Colors -> Brightness-Contrast and increased the contrast to 40.

Now the text of the sign stands out and the red is nice and bright.

Add the vintage effect

Lastly, I added a vignette to give it a more vintage feel. I followed an excellent tutorial at gimpology.com on creating vignettes to do this, so I won’t repeat the steps here. (Note: I didn’t complete the last step of this tutorial which was to add a transparent magenta colour layer over the whole composition.)

And here is the final result. Click the image for a larger size in Flickr.

Makes you think twice about littering.

Try GIMP yourself

GIMP is my new favorite editing tool.

If you’d like to try out GIMP you can download it from the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:

• How to install GIMP on Mac OSX

In iPhoto, resize an image when you export it to be used in another application

Resize a photo using the export option

Emailing a photo or posting an image to a website (such as the ones in this post) don’t need to be large files. In fact, a lower resolution is preferable so you don’t crash your friend’s email program or create a webpage that takes a lifetime to load. Resizing an image will reduce its resolution and hence its file size.

There are two options to resize a photo using iPhoto.

Option 1: A simple but effective way to resize and email a photo

Select your image and choose the Email button at the bottom right corner of the iPhoto window. This pop-up box will appear:

The one option you have is to select a file size: Small, Medium, Large and Actual Size. You don’t have the option to select a width or height, but the pop-up will display the file size for each option you select. The smaller the file size the quicker the photo will download to the recipient’s computer.

Select Compose and the Apple Mail program will open for you to write and send your message. This is the most basic option and will only be useful if you use Apple Mail.

Option 2: For more control over resizing your image in iPhoto follow these 3 steps

Step 1 – Choose your image

Select your image and choose File -> Export. A pop-up window with three tabs will appear.

Step 2 – Select a file format

On the File Export tab there are several options you can change – you want the Kind and Size options. The Kind option has five file formats to choose from. Three of these allow you to resize the image: JPEG; PNG; or TIFF. If you select JPEG (a common format to email) you also have the option to select an image quality, ranging from low to maximum, and this will affect the final file size of the image.

Step 3 – Select a size

On the Size option you can simply select Small, Medium or Large, but if you want a specific size select Custom. This is my preferred option.

If you choose Custom select a specific height or width. Click Export and save the image to a location on your computer. And that’s it!

Example of the various file sizes

If you are concerned about the file size of your exported image here’s an example of the different options on one of my photos.

The original dimensions of this image below are 1928 x 1427 pixels with a file size of 1.4 mb. That’s too large a file size to email or add to this post and you would need to scroll across the page to see the entire image. My preferred image size for this website is 400px.

Custom resize

Resizing the original image to a 400px JPEG breaks down to the following dimensions:

• maximum quality = 184kb
• high quality = 44kb
• medium quality = 28kb (this is the one I’m using above)
• low quality = 16kb

Small, medium and large sizes

If I simply want a small, medium or large image (without using the custom option) the original image would become:

• full size = 436kb with the same dimensions
• large = 192kb at 1280 x 947 pixels
• medium = 56kb at 640 x 474 pixels
• small = 20kb at 320 x 237 pixels

Remember…resize on export

I have to admit this resize option in iPhoto hid under the radar for me for a while but it’s actually a very simple process. Having the resize option available when exporting it from iPhoto makes sense. And most importantly, resizing an image on export leaves the original version intact.