Common Photo Editing Tasks

Summary: Find the most common photo editing tasks here!

Even professional photographers use digital editing tools to perfect their images. Rarely does the image come from the camera completely perfect. As a budding photographer, you'll get even closer to professional results if you have a grasp of some common editing tasks.

We don't expect everyone to go out and buy expensive commercial software like Adobe's Photoshop (which is still the best in our opinion). We've tried to keep it simple. The tutorial collection below provides our favorite common and extremely useful digital editing tasks created using "The GIMP".

"The GIMP" is an open-source and free software package that is available for a variety of operating systems. Try it out before you spend hundreds of dollars on a more expensive software program.

Digital Editing in "The GIMP" Removing Red-Eye Create Your Own Simple Logo 3-D Text and Logos Cropping, Rotating, and Resizing Images Create Vignettes Drawing Shapes with Paths Convert Image to Pen and Ink Drawing Simulating Film Grain Convert to Black and White Color a Black and White Sketch Create Tileable Backgrounds Create Gold and Chrome Text Convert Image to Sketch Reduce Image Noise Sharpen Image (smart) Adjust Contrast to Expose Hidden Detail in Image Create Dreamy Feel in Image

There are many different digital editing software packages out there, so you may want to try a few until you find one that you like. Keep in mind that each digital editing software package will have a different user interface.

Photo Tips: Popular Software Adobe® Photoshop® Commercial software, The best and used by professionals everywhere Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Commercial software, available for Windows Paint.Net Free for Windows, A PC World Top 20 Product of 2007 The GIMP Free, open-source software, Unix and Windows versions available

Typically, digital cameras will come with software that is quite capable to perform these common image editing tasks. You may already have a very powerful digital editing software package installed!