Make those photos better.

Just a few hints for you that take photos and want to make them better before you put them on the net.
I don't think this is photo manipulation...
Just a way to make them look cleaner and more colorful...
Many of you probably allready know this but for you who don't...

Okey, I've learned this on a graphic course I had...
And I do this with all my photos that I put on the net.
(IN PHOTOSHOP)
First offcourse you take away all the stuff you don't want in the photo if there are any...like black spots or something like that.
Then you press Ctrl + L.
First I change the first arrow and make everything that is grayish black.Then take the last arrow and make everyhthing white.
Then take the middle arrow to make it just the way you want it...
This will change in every photo so I can't tell you how much you should change them...
You'll notice when it's right...
To see the difference press cancel and see the difference...it's huge!

Okey after you've gotten it right you press CTRL + U and change the color a bit if it's necessary...I don't do this much...but every now and then it's nessasery...

The next thing you should do is to sharpen the image...once or twice should do the trick...depending on the photo of course...

And now you should be done...
Now take a look at the photo it was in the beginning and look at the final result...
Nice huh

If you have any nice ways to make it even better please share it

Try unsharp mask instead of the sharpen filter?
Also people tend to have images with 150 or even 300 DPI on the web, change it to 72 DPI (before resizing the image itself on screen).

Thank you Paavo Perkele!
That was a new one...Now you can adjust how much you want to sharpen it

here is to show the difference...
A photo of our beach...
http://3jorn.exoc.uni.cc/images/beach.jpg

OR

http://3jorn.exoc.uni.cc/images/beach2.jpg

Yeah unsharp mask is the way to go. That also helps clear up a photo if it is out of focus and blurry, you can usually salvage it a little by with the unsharp mask.

The automatic color balance works pretty well too, most of the time. (Shift + Control + B)

uhh - before you get the pic in PS - !!!shoot with a tripod!!!

it's the best advice anyone gave me. try it - you'll never go back
also it's a very cheap investment - a good tripod is about 19-20$ - and helps tons...

That could turn into a really nice photomanip, 3jorn. Nice picture.

And thanks for the tips - I printed them out. And I had always forgotten to change to 72dpi before uploading for web. :D

tom

One litte trick I learned is that after using the unsharp mask, go to "edit" and click on fade unsharp mask, then choose luminosity and it'll set in the sharpening real nice.

I don't much like any of the sharpen tools, I prefer duplicating the layer and running a high pass filter with either soft light blend mode or hard light with reduced opacity blend mode (or any other suitable blend mode. (oh and try a radius of 3-10 depending on picture or result wanted).

Good thing about PS is there are many solutions to reach the same goals

All I have to do is learn English.

also if you have the option to take your photo's in raw or tiff format.. and have the plugin for photoshop7 or you have photoshop cs, you can adjust the color temp. yay!