Editing pictures

Computers in Communication
Boston University College of Communication
Copyright © 1996 by Professor Jim Lengel

You may not need to edit your pictures at all, if you are happy with them as you captured them. If you aren't, you will want to edit them. A good tool for editing photographic-style pictures is Adobe PhotoShop. Launch PhotoShop, then Open your picture from the File menu. The images you have saved in your project folder are in PICT format, which PhotoShop and most other programs can read. PhotoShop has many tools to use to modify your image. Some affect the overall nature of the image, such as the Image Adjustment tools, Brightness and Contrast. Others allow you to select and then touch up small sections of the picture.

The eraser clears out whatever is under it, making a white spot.
To use the pencil or the paintbrush, select one of them, then select a color for it using the big squares in the color selector. The tool will then paint this color over whatever is on your picture.
To match a color already in your picture, use the eye-dropper. Select the eye dropper, then use it to "pick up" a color from the picture. This color will appear in the color selector square. Now the pencil or the paintbrush will paint in that color.
Another common technique is to use the lasso tool to copy a piece of the background of the image, then to paste it over something you want to hide.

PhotoShop has tools for doing most anything you want to your image. When you are done, save your edited image - in compressed form - to your project folder as a PICT file.