My photography students all know that I am a stickler about “photographs” being created with cameras - not computers, and we spend many weeks and months learning how to create great photographs with our cameras.

However, there are times when the best photographer cannot quite extract the best photograph from a scene - no matter how much expertise is brought to bear on the situation. There are just things in this physical world that can present impossible obstacles to getting the perfect light or angle, and yet, the subject itself is still worth shooting.

This is where computer magic comes into photography - to save the day. It is not ok to shoot crummy photos thinking you can always “PhotoShop” them later, but it is more than ok to use image editing software to do what could not be done in the field despite your best efforts.

Image editing is a very different thing than image manipulation. Editing, just as in the editing of good writing, should always be transparent in the end result. A photo after editing is better, but not different in its message and content.

And this is what this workshop will teach you to do - to make subtle corrections and alterations that can make a perfect photo look like you shot it that way in the first place!

Notes on Pots and Doors (right)
The two photos at the right demonstrate the differences that careful editing can make. The original was shot toward evening in low light. The scene was in a courtyard with a large fountain located just where you would have wanted to stand to get this framed in the right way. Though I had permission to shoot there, I did not have permission to remove price tags or move things around. So I did the very best I could to get the original.

The transition to the version above involved many different kinds of edits, but none of them changed the essence of the original photo. It is still what it was in subject and intent.
This is what you will learn to do in this workshop.

The workshop is run in a private Yahoo Group just as my other workshops are. But instead of waiting a week for each new lesson, you will find links to all 6 Lessons as soon as you enter the classroom, and you will get the link to the classroom as soon as we receive your order for the workshop.

We do recommend that you work through the lessons in sequence, because the information is cumulative, but the timing is your own. And should a need arise to learn a specific editing technique, you can skip ahead as necessary.

The instructor will answer any questions posted to the Classroom messages, and the Photos section is available in case you need to show a photo in order to make your question more clear.

The classroom is permanent and you may stay there as long as you need to in order to complete the lessons.

Six Lessons in Photo Editing, Level 1

1. Reframing and Straightening

2. Reframing, Proper Cropping, Understanding the Full Range of the Crop Tool

3. Exposure Correction - Global (Correcting "Too Dark" or "Too Light" in the photo as a whole)

4. Exposure Correction - Specific (Correcting "Too Dark" or "Too Light" in just parts of the photo)

5. Color Correction

6. Removing Unwanted Elements

It is best, but not required, to have completed my introductory workshop, The Art of Digital Photography, so you will understand lighting and exposure and know what it is you are correcting for. These photography basics are not a part of this workshop.

Supplies. . .

Image Editing Software. Our preference is PhotoShop or Elements (any recent version), but PaintShop Pro can be substituted if you take it upon yourself to figure out where the same type of tools and operations are located.

Although I use PhotoShop CS2 for my own editing, screen shots in these lessons will be done in PhotoShop Elements 4.0, for the sake of using the best common denominator. Differences between Elements and PhotoShop will be noted where necessary, but there are not very many.

Adobe Reader.
This is necessary for downloading and printing the weekly Lessons - which will be delivered as a Zipped PDF document, posted in the Links section of our Yahoo Group Classroom. You must have WinZip (PC) or Stuff-it Expander (Mac) installed in order to unzip the files. Both are common and free for download if you do not have them. Use Google to find the download sites.

Photographs
Although the photos being edited in the lessons will be offered for download in a low-res version so you can follow along, you should have a stash of your own photographs that need improving in one way or another, so you can practice the techniques.

Tuition. . .

Total cost for the 6 Lesson Workshop is $75.

Sign Up. . .

Click here to sign up for this workshop.

Notes on Little Door (left)
Although a photo of this miniature adobe church would have been nice, it's location and the time of day did not provide the circumstances to get that shot. The highlights really detracted, there was too little light on the rest of it, and the efforts necessary in the computer to make this right would not be worth it.

But, low light and all, I was intriqued by the tiny doorway, and since the values in that area were pretty even except for one finger of burnt highlight that would have to be dealt with, I decided to take the shot anyway - at my camera's highest image quality and resolution, in hopes that I could extract the doorway later. Because of a parked car, I could not stand in the right place to use my telephoto lens to zoom in on the door (lens have minimum focusing distances), so I had to switch to a medium range lens, and this is as close as I could get with it.

Back at the computer, I was able to work in PhotoShop to get the result I wanted - as shown above left.