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Basic Horse Photo Editing
 By Evita
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16th Jan 2012 •
9,624 views
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12 comments
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For Ponybox, most people stick to manipulating images to put horses on different backgrounds. I, however, usually just edit the photos I have taken to make them look their best. In photography this is known as post-processing, image processing, image enhancing, or photo processing. Most professional photographers and some amateurs use some Adobe software like Lightroom or Photoshop, but those are expensive. I use the free version of GIMP, which works for my purposes.
Most of what I do involves changing sharpness, cropping, and color curves. I have learned most of what I do through trial and error—basically throwing the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. I’m going to show you what I do using a photo of Kate that I’ve taken recently. Let’s start with color curves.
Color Curves
When I have a photo that’s properly exposed and has pretty decent color to it, I usually start by thinking about how I want to improve the shot. For the photo I’m using here, I want to make the colors pop a bit more. To do this, I’m going to go to Colors>Curves. When the window pops up, click on a point on the diagonal line and drag it around the graph. As you do this, you’ll see the colors in the image preview
change in saturation.
With this image, I wanted to make the colors a bit darker to make them pop. When I changed the curve so the photo looked the way I wanted it to, I stopped and clicked okay.
Crop
Because this photo had a nice tight crop straight from the camera, I’m not going to crop it any closer. In fact, it’s right where I want it. If there had been a lot of empty background above Kate’s head, I would have cropped it out because it would detract from the image I wanted to portray. To crop, choose the Select tool in the toolbox (it should look like a dashed rectangle), select what you want to keep, then go to Image>Crop to Selection and click. If you don’t like it, you can hit Ctrl+Z and start over.
Sharpness
Sometimes images lose their sharpness when they are edited. I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but it can’t hurt to sharpen it up a little more. To do this, go to Filters>Enhance>Sharpen. You can then drag the bar to the right to increase the sharpness. I usually pull the bar up to around 90, but it depends on the image. If you over-sharpen, though, you will get a lot of noise and halos around the foreground objects. Don’t over-sharpen! Also, note that sharpening your image will NOT change how well or badly focused your image is.
Unless there are glaring mistakes in your photo, you should be all done! Don’t worry if your first attempts don’t come out the way you want them to—always remember to save a copy with a different name so that the original image is also intact and you can go back and edit it again if you need to.
Good luck! |
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Let It Ride
Nice article! Informative(:
Nice article! Informative(:
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Jan 16, 2012
• 8,542 views
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All That Jazz
Oh my gosh. I tried your tips on a picture, and it made it 100 times better. Thank you for the amazing article! :)
Oh my gosh. I tried your tips on a picture, and it made it 100 times better. Thank you for the amazing article! :)
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Jan 16, 2012
• 8,562 views
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lovehorse
Thank you so much, this has really helped!!
Thank you so much, this has really helped!!
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Jan 17, 2012
• 8,533 views
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Madeirey
Great article :)
Great article :)
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Jan 17, 2012
• 8,521 views
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Cowzers
Great Article ! Very helpful...Thank you !
Great Article ! Very helpful...Thank you !
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Jan 18, 2012
• 8,553 views
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Jan 18, 2012
• 8,558 views
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Double Spur Ranch
Very great article! Very nice advice for people.
Very great article! Very nice advice for people.
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Jan 19, 2012
• 8,532 views
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Painted Destiny
Great article! I'll try this next time before I just upload pictures straight from the camera!
Great article! I'll try this next time before I just upload pictures straight from the camera!
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Jan 20, 2012
• 8,525 views
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FreeRein
OMG. This was sooo helpful. :D
OMG. This was sooo helpful. :D
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Jan 20, 2012
• 8,521 views
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My Paper Heart
Great article! I may take your opinion and try this. :)
Great article! I may take your opinion and try this. :)
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Jan 23, 2012
• 8,519 views
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Diddy
Super helpful, i learned here :D
thanks!
Super helpful, i learned here :D
thanks!
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Feb 4, 2012
• 8,549 views
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Jul 20, 2012
• 8,564 views
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