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Digital photos are great and having cameras on our phones means that we never miss a moment. However, you do lose the magic of having physical photos because most people just keep the pictures on their phones and don’t do much with them. The good news is that you can get them printed out easily, so you can still make some amazing photo albums.
One big benefit of digital photos is that you can edit them before you get them printed so you get the perfect shot every time. You might think that you have to be a professional photographer to do that, but you don’t. Anybody can edit photos quite easily with some basic software. If you want to give it a try, here are a few tips to help you get started.
Find Some Editing Software
Before you do anything else, you’ll need some photo editing software on your computer. If you want to use more advanced software, you’ll need a computer with a powerful processor. Something like a laptop with Intel Evo for your home will easily run top-of-the-line software like Adobe Photoshop without any problems. An older computer may struggle a little and it might be a bit slow. If you want something simpler, you should have some built-in software on your computer already. There are also a lot of free applications like GIMP that allow you to edit photos well.
Change the Brightness and Contrast
A lot of photos print badly because they are too dark and the contrast is wrong. They come out blurry and fuzzy, which isn’t what you want. You can easily fix this by changing some of the most basic settings in your photo editing software; the brightness and contrast. If the image is quite dark, just up the brightness until it looks nice and clear. Then, change the contrast to give you more differentiation and depth between the colors. You can use the whites in the picture as a guide. Ideally, they should be a crisp, pure white, rather than an off-white or gray color.
Get the Size Right
Next, check what size you are printing the picture and double-check the size of the digital image. If they don’t match up, you need to crop the image to fit. If you don’t crop it yourself before getting it printed, it may be done automatically and you won’t have control over which parts get cut out.
Sharpen the Images
A lot of photo editing software has a sharpening feature. This just irons out any blurry spots and gives you a crisp, clear picture. To start, set the sharpening tool at around 50% and see what it looks like, then experiment with moving it up and down to see how the image changes. It should be fairly easy to get the desired result by doing this and it makes your pictures come out so much better.
Anybody can easily do these simple edits on their photos before printing and it makes the world of difference, so why not give it a try?
