Photo effects often prove to be manual work
The retouchers often recieve photos which are very difficult, if not impossible, to rework. This little guide should help you discover and understand the different notions in the field of digital photo effects and photography which will help you in your future choice of photos.
Digital photo effects over time
Photo effects are not a new invention of this century and digital photography. Photographic effects have already existed for over 100 years. But with digital photography and new software, photo retouching has become more and more popular. Lots of analogue photo effects have simply been taken up again. A digital photo is no longer developped on paper, it is saved electronically and then treated by special effects software to be used in different media. The negative film for digital cameras has been replaced by a sensor which transforms the analogue image into a digital signal.
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Different uses of photo effects
Photo effects have grown in popularity due to the démocratisation of digital photography.Only in the private sphere there are inexpensive software programmes for photo effects that offer the possibility of a relatively simple effects for private users. This photo effect retouching is evidently not comparable to that done by professionals and destined for photographers, graphic designers and agencies!
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The different types of photo effects
Today we differentiate between 2 types of photo special effects: technical photo effects and creative photo effects. Changing colour for an impression or even the clipping of objects are used more often for more technically demanding photo effects, that cannot really be otherwsie defined as a creative photo effect. A correction of the tone or even a modification of the colour requires a computer screen where the colours are dislayed correctly, especially when we want to make colour changes to adapt an image to be used by different media. Photo effects become creative and really interesting in the field of beauty effects and photo montage, when the aim is to give a new significance to an image.
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The image resolution and pixels are fundamental
For digital photo effects, the pixels are very important. When photo effects are created these are the very elements that are manipulated. The high resolution of an image is a very important critera for the quality of an image and for the final result of digital photo retouching. Mobile phone cameras generally have a low resolution that does not allow us to retouch photos to a satisfactory standard. The resolution of most cameras is according to megapixels. Most compact ameras have a resultion of about 10 megapixels, SLRs can come close to around 24 megapixels. When we want to enlarge or reduce the size of an image, the number of pixels stays the same, or rather then number of image points, and its the length or the width of the image that changes. However, an image cannot be enlargened indefinitely. When the number of pixels is not sufficient for the image, it is necesary to insert new pixels, which is usually interpolation.
Most recent file formats for photo effects
There are three major image formats that can play a more or less important role during photo effects. The JPEG format, the TIFF format and the RAW format. These three formats are generally the most widely used and can be opened with nearly all software used for photo effets, with the exception of the RAW format. The different image formats include different colour palettes.
