Simple Ways To Remove Blemishes From Photo Portraits

Blemishes such as scars, pimples and acne will often be visible in portrait photos. You may want to keep them, but if not, we'll show you in this article just how easy it is to remove them.

Of course, it's better to prevent blemishes with clever lighting or camera tricks than rely on photo editing. For example, you could try a diffusion filter to smooth over and mask blemishes when you take the photo.
However, with the photo editing software that's available today, the simplest and most inexpensive way to deal with blemishes is by healing, cloning or, in some cases, both.

Healing
The healing tool is found in most photo editors and provides a very simple, and ultimately rewarding, technique for repairing flaws in portrait photography.

It works by blending a blemish with a texture that you choose from elsewhere in your photo. The photo editing software picks up the colour and brightness values of this texture and merges them with those of the original blemish.

The subtlety of this tool is what makes it perfect, not only for small areas such as pimples and scars, but for larger and more prevalent features too like wrinkles, where colours and textures are high in contrast.
Your chosen texture isn't just pasted straight over the top of the problem area, but it's blended with the surrounding pixels in the portrait, thus creating a seamless, unnoticeable result.

One important thing to remember when using a healing tool is that different areas of the face vary considerably. For example, the skin on the forehead differs greatly in its colour and texture when compared with the skin around the eyes.

Try to choose replacement textures from as close to the blemish as you can; this keeps your touch-ups as realistic as possible.

Cloning
Tools that enable you to clone parts of an image are also common in photo editors and, as with healing tools, they make professional results easy to achieve.

However, whereas healing tools blend two textures together, cloning tools simply copy and paste a chosen area of your portrait over a problem area.

The cloning tool is ideal for small fixes such as pimples or even for larger areas which are low in detail. On the other hand, more intricate problems are better left to a healing tool. Tackling such issues by cloning usually results in changes which are noticeable rather than blending into the photo.

Lines will be visible where the edges of the cloned area join the underlying photo. This can be reduced to some extent, by using a soft brush which creates some blurring between the two areas.

But cloning is best used for small fixes or for larger, plain areas. And it's important, no matter where you use it, to pick various parts of the portrait as your source. This reduces the likelihood of creating immediately noticeable, repeated patterns which is inevitable if you clone the same texture over and over again.

Healing + Cloning = Optimum Results
As you can see, there are instances where each of these tools performs admirably and there's no cast-iron rule to say which is better.

In fact, the best results are often achieved when healing and cloning are used together. Just keep in mind that moderation is the key; that way, you correct the blemish, but you retain natural skin tones and avoid a plastic, airbrushed feel.

Peter White is employed by Serif, a leading developer of software for home and small business use. Serif sells a range of software for photo editing, which includes PhotoPlus, a feature rich photo editing software package and PhotoPlus Starter Edition, a free photo editing software suite for novices.

Original article

How to Become a Better Photographer In A Few Simple Steps

Photography is fantastic as a career, a pastime, or simply as a way to capture those special occasions, events, and the lives of those that you love and hold dearest. Whatever your motivation, the following paragraphs will provide you with some pointers on how you can take much better photos, and get the kind of results you are looking for.

Try to incorporate shapes into your photography. Whether it's triangles, circles, squares or lines, these can add structure and dynamism to your work, and can help lead the eye around the frame of your image.

The "S" on your camera settings stands for shutter speed. Use faster shutter speeds to get razor-sharp looking pictures when taking moving things. Set the shutter speed to slower speeds when you're looking to get a more experimental effect that incorporates blur. This is a great characteristic to make use of when getting photos of fireworks or even tail lights on a car.

Try to understand and master all of the basic rules of composition before deciding to break them. Once you have mastered them, you will be able to more effectively know when to break them! There are many excellent books available on the subject of composition, and I recommend that you really devour them!

Keep your photos relatively simple. A good picture ought to be simple and easy to understand. Whilst it's important to take meaningful photos, in most cases your photos will express much more if you concentrate on simple subjects rather than attempting to pull together a composition that's too intricate.

If you can afford it by an external flash gun and use that rather than the one that comes with your camera. This is because the on camera flash can create very harsh and flat lighting. With an external flash you can bounce the light off a wall or ceiling and get a much more natural and flattering effect.

A great photography hint is to always be conscious of your environment. Even when you don't have a camera with you, you should still maintain your photographic 'vision' and keep an eye open for interesting subjects and shapes. Keep looking at the quality and nature of light in different situations too. This will enable you to really develop your photographic 'eye'.

It can be a great idea to play around with shadows in your pictures. In fact, sometimes the shadows cast by objects can be more visually interesting than the subject itself, especially when they are cast across an uneven surface or when the subject is side-lit.

If you really want to get creative, and have some fun in the process, try shooting with some black and white film. Film is still widely available and traditional black and white prints have a beautiful timeless quality to them.

It's important to remember that with a bit of practise and some determination you really can improve the quality of your work. You really don't have to be a professional to become a good photographer!

Matt Foden is a wedding photographer based in Croydon in London. He regularly covers weddings across the whole of the United Kingdom. You can see more of his work here:

http://www.mattfoden.co.uk/

Original article

Three simple changes to stem as a professional photographer

In my stock library job I look at about 25 new photographer applications every month and I've been doing that for almost 10 years now... that's about 3000 photographers and 36,000 + photos. I also spend a lot of time each month monitoring the new images being added to the library. Again this amounts to thousands of images each and every year.

I can tell you, in all those pictures there have been tens of thousands of photos that could have been great stock photos with real sales potential, if only the photographer had done their job right. The frustrating part is, in all those cases, the damage was done by a few fairly simple mistakes that could have been easily avoided.

Now I'll freely admit that I'm no. master photographer but I do know what separates an OK photo from a stock image with real sales potential.

So here are three areas where I believe any photographer can easily step their work up to the next level with little more than a basic awareness and change of mind-set.

Lighting

If I could only make one suggestion, this would be it. issue.

Most fans only really think about lighting after the sun has gone down. Year even then, all they usually do is pop up the flash. Some 'outdoor' photographers might try to time their work for early morning or late afternoon light, but even then they tend to look at lighting as a separate element of from the image.

The pros on the other hand, consider the lighting of their subject, with every single shot. Their focus isn't just on the light, but how the light affects their subject and whether that works for the message they're trying to capture.

The pros will consider additional lighting or shading, on every single shot. It is as much part of their routine as removing the lens cap.

So make it part of your pre shot routine to stop and ask yourself how your subject is read.

Are the key features properly reads? Is there anything you can do to make it better? Flash might be an option, but so might a reflector, a different camera position, turning on a light... coming back in a few hours time.

Make the lighting of your subject your main concern and your photos will improve dramatically in both quality and commercial potential. Nothing kills the commercial prospects for an image as quickly as uneven lighting... buyers take one look as deep shadows and/or washed out highlights and walk away every time.

Patience

If all you do is capture a visual representation of what's there at the time, you're taking snapshots, and they are a dime a dozen. If you want to capture images that are going to stand out from the crowd - and sell - you have to convey a message or a story about that subject to your viewers.

So make it a habit to study the subject in detail before you even look through the viewfinder. Work out what it is exactly that you want to convey?

Conversely, what might your viewer want to know about the subject? What can you capture and convey that the viewer might not already know?

Once you're clear on the key elements of your subject, you can start thinking about the effect different angles, distances, lighting and camera settings might have on the final image.

Then you'll find you're really creating new and unique images with real potential.

A lot of amateur images come across as indecisive. You get the feeling the photographer 'knew' there was a photo-op there, but rather than dig around a bit and find it, they just kept pressing the shutter hoping to get something.

Sometimes they might get lucky, but more often than not, the end result is vague images with a subject lost in the middle-ground, lots of clutter in the background and no clear point of interest in the foreground... and zero commercial potential.

Work out EXACTLY what it is you're trying to say before you start. Then consider your lighting. Then use your technical skills and creativity to make sure you say it.

Technique

For all the convenience of automatic-everything camera, I sometimes wish they were somehow only available after the photographers had passed a manual photography course. Unfortunately, it is so easy and so convenient that most photographers who start out on automatic never go back and learn how to control those settings themselves.

And that means there are a huge number of photographers out there producing images that are almost great... but because they have absolutely no. theory and only very basic technical skills, they will never know what's holding them back and more importantly, how to correct the problems and make great images.

I see this every week with the photographer submissions.

Shots that could have been perfect if the photographer had only turned off the center weighted auto-focus and paid more attention to their point of interest.Shots that could have been perfect if they'd turned off the preset mode, and thought about their depth-of-field exposure.Shots that could have been perfect if only they'd thought about the effects of shutter speed...

The other frustration is those photographers who don't even bother to read the manual that came with their camera so they never take full advantage of the features available to them. Here are just a few problems... and the photographer's explanations... that I've seen just recently:

Great submission of images, but they all had a serious colour cast: "Yes, I saw something about setting white balance, but figured the factory settings would have it covered..." Fantastic subjects & strong compositions, but grainy beyond belief... "That's probably because I keep the ISO set to 1600 so I don' t have to worry about using up my battery flash..." "Fantastic submission... technically spot - on & subject matter that's perfect for stock, except they were captured as medium jpgs..." "I didn't want to run out of space on my memory stick..." "

The last one might sound totally ridiculous but it's a familiar story around here... the photographer had a $2000 + camera and was shooting hundreds of images every week with real stock potential, if only he'd splurged another $50 on a couple of extra memory cards.

The average point-and-shoot captures a bit quality file than the one this guy was saving!

So the final suggestion here is, if your entire experience is automatic-digital photography, every chance you can switch off the auto-everything and learn to do it yourself.

Even better, call into the local second hand shop, pick up an old manual camera and put a few rolls of film through it. They're practically giving them away these days and you'll learn more from those 100 shots than a whole year's shooting with digital your auto-everything!

OK, that's just a few general ideas to get you started. Next time around I'll cover a few more specific elements we see in the best-selling photos and a simple trick to make sure you get them right every time.

Matt Brading

Matt has published a complete stock photography marketing kit that interested photographers can download at: http://www.GlobalEyeImages.com/SellStockPhotos

For more tips & suggestions on the business of selling your photography, be sure to check out our Stock Photography Marketing blog: http://www.GlobalEyeImages.com/Blog

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