What a picture

Posted on 26 Aug 2003 at 11:30

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There's no need to discard your digital holiday snaps just because you had a bad hair day. Using a few expert photo-editing tricks, you can banish blotches, iron out wrinkles and even remove badly behaved friends from the frame, leaving you looking the picture of health.

They say the camera never lies - but they're lying. This month, we'll demonstrate the art of telling digital porkies as we explore the ins and outs of editing digital pictures.

A normal photo from a conventional film camera is a fixed and final image. If the presence of an ex or a disgraced friend is spoiling an otherwise favourite photograph, there's nothing you can do - bar taking a scalpel to it. If, however, you're the lucky owner of a digital camera, the picture you have on your monitor is just the start of the story. By using software and a little expert knowledge, you'll be able to improve and even radically alter the image. When you're happy with what you see, you can print or e-mail the picture to your friends. And for all they know, it's real: that's your sun tan, those are your teeth - and no, you've never had a laughter line. Honest.

As we shall see, the possibilities are endless - just look at the pictures over the following five pages if you want a sample of what can be achieved.

If all this appears a little daunting, don't worry. We'll talk you through the tricky stuff, step by step. And before we start editing pictures, we'll spend some time looking at how you can make sure that the digital pictures you take are the best they can be. You can certainly rescue digital pictures that look a bit grotty - though if you're serious about making fabulous fabrications, it's always the best policy to begin with the best raw materials.

Although this feature assumes you'll be using Paint Shop Pro 8 (our Top 50 photo editing package), don't worry if you don't have a copy. The same basic techniques can be used in any good image editor.

Author: Adam banks