This video from expert village illustrates some of the ideas I covered in my last post, Color in Composition. It’s on colors in painting but the same ideas can be used for photography.

The oldest known painting was made around 32,000 years ago. Photography has been around for less than 200 years» . The extra years mean there’s a lot of great information on painting and composition. I use this to my advantage and apply the same ideas to my photography.

Do you have any favorite resources for ideas in your photography? I’d love the hear them and I know other readers would too. Help out your community and share them in the comments.

Coming up, cool techniques for altering the color in your photos. Stay Tuned…

Last time I talked about getting the colors in your digital photography to look accurate. You want people to see what you saw, right? Now that we’ve got those colors looking their best it’s time to get creative. No, we’re not going to start adding crazy effects or processes. All it takes to make your photos look great and stand out from the crowd is a little planning and a little composition» .

Think Like an Advertiser

Advertisers know what they’re doing when it comes to color. They know that people have innate, learned, and cultural responses to certain colors. So they use those colors to get a response from you.

The rumor is that red makes people hungry or thirsty and that’s why fast food and cola companies use it. I don’t know if red actually makes people thirsty, or if it’s just that companies like Coca Cola have used red so much that Americans now think of red as the color for soft drinks. Either way, it works¹.

Even if you’re not trying to sell something, you can use color in your photography to encourage a response from the viewer. Want to give people a calm, relaxed feeling when they see your work? Try using cool tones like blue and green. For a more active and excited response from people, try warm colors like red and yellow.

Some colors have cultural meanings. When I see blue and white in a snowy scene I think of Hanukkah while the same snowy scene with green and red elements would make me think of Christmas. Some colors are thought of as masculine while others are considered more feminine. Colors can have all kinds of meanings and choosing them deliberately can help you tell a story with your photos.

These photos of persimmons are almost identical except for the different backgrounds. The one with the pink background looks feminine wile the blue-green background looks more masculine.

Use conditioned responses (like associating red with cola) to create a mood in your own photos. Try adding some red to a photo of a cola. Playing on the connection between red and soft drinks might make the viewer long for a certain brand of cola. Using primary colors in your back to school photos might remind people of elementary school. The photos will look familiar, pleasing, or “right” to the viewer since they’re (consciously or not) reminded of a color connection they’ve already made.

Get some inspiration and find out the meanings of colors. Smashing Magazine has a great article on color meanings. It’s targeted to web designers but the ideas apply to color photography as well.

Use a Color Palate Generator

Big Huge Labs automatically created this palette from my own photo.

Make sure the colors in your photos will look good together. Your whole family doesn’t have to wear the same color to look good in a group photo. A color palate picker can help you choose colors that will compliment each other. Or get creative and pick colors from a favorite painting and recreate them in your photos.

Easy to use color palate generators can help you plan your shoot without learning color theory. These tools automatically provide an array of colors that look good together. Some even connect to flickr so you can pick colors directly from existing photos and artwork.  Once you know a palate looks good and not garish you can confidently use those color combos in your photos.

Big Huge Labs palate generator chooses colors from your own photos automatically. Kuler, a free website by adobe, has more options and lets  you select colors  from other flickr members photos, generate palates from a color wheel, or browse palates other folks made. I’ve used Kuler to inspire my still life photography and plan on using it for portraits» in the future.

Another tool I love for choosing colors in my photos is the interactive online color wheel. I talk more about it below.

Keep it simple

Photo generously provided by Deirdre. Click to see it large at Flickr.com

This cool photo of a mantis on a sunflower, generously provided by a subscriber, looks awesome without a distracting background. The simple green and yellow color scheme let the action in the photo speak for itself.

Color photos look great displayed on a plain white or black background b/c there aren’t any other colors to compete. Many photography sites use either white or black as their background color and museums often have plain white walls to let the artwork shine.

The same can apply to color photos themselves. The subject is the most important part of the photo and you want it to stand out. By choosing to use just a few colors it’s easy to make the subject look different.

Try pairing down your photos to just a few colors. Use post processing to convert the photo to black and white then re-color just one key element.

Or compose your picture to include only a few simple colors in the first place. Product photographers often use simple white or gray backgrounds to make the products stand out. Do the same with portraits by sticking a white sheet or piece of white foam core behind your subject. Simpler still, choose to take snapshots with just the green grass behind your subject rather than including the entire garden in bloom.

You don’t have to stick to black and white either. Make the background color contrast with the subject to make the subject really pop like this watermelon on a turquoise background.

I actually found this color combination by using an interactive online color wheel. I chose the color of the watermelon on the wheel, then found it’s exact opposite (opposite colors make each other look brighter). I had this turquoise place mat that was just the right color so I used it as the background.

Thinking about how simple you can make the color in your photos is a great exercise. I think like this all the time and my shots are that much stronger for it.

Next up is the last post in the Color Series. I covered getting color right in the last post, and now we’ve talked about using color in composition for effect. The last post will focus on fun effects you can use to change the color color of your photos. I’m looking forward to this one!

Stay tuned, and if you haven’t subscribed the big orange RSS button at the top of the page is waiting for you!

¹ Studies suggest that consumers can learn to associate colors with specific products like associating the color red with soda:

“What we know about consumers’ color choices” Randi Priluck Grossman Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, USA, and Joseph Z. Wisenblit Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, USA

That's me...Kat Landreth.

Joining Pare and Focus for the first time? Great!  If you want to take better pictures without a lot of headache, hair pulling, and money spent, you’re definitely in the right place.

Pare and Focus is a growing resource on beginning digital photography and photo editing. My goal is to make all of my recommendations simple, and inexpensive so your new hobby can be a blast, not a pain.

Check out the Who’s behind Pare and Focus? section in the sidebar for more info on what I do here.

Want to know where to get started?

If you’re interested in free photo editing,  check out “4 Differences Between GIMP and Photoshop that Matter” Or take a look at “Free Photo Editors Compared” for a comparison of 5 free desktop and online photo editors. Ready to take the plunge and get GIMP? Check out the GIMP Quick Start Guide at the top of this page.

Want to know more about digital photography? Learn about getting color right or choosing the best file format for your pictures.

Looking for a place to show off your photos? Join us in the Pare and Focus group on Flickr.

Have fun playing with the site too. There’s all kinds of buttons» , expanding notes, roll over image effects and interactive stuff going on. These things have practical uses -roll over effects let me show before and after images effectively, and expanding notes let me cram more information into every post- but I have to admit they make Pare and Focus really fun too.

My next post is part of a series on color in digital photography. This one will tackle color in composition. I’ve found some cool resources, and I think it’s going to be a really interesting post. Interested? Subscribe to stay on top of the Color Series and every new post.

Like the site? Think I’m missing something? Have a question or a suggestion? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for visiting,

Kat

More often than not, I want the colors in my photos to look like they did in real life. Ok, sometimes I want them to look better than real life. But even then, I want the colors to be realistic.

If you’re beauty blogging, food blogging, or selling products online, you want your photos to look true to life too. Your audience deserves an accurate representation, right? Food doesn’t often look appetizing when the colors are off. (Imagine green tinted meat loaf…yuk!) And how could your readers take your eyeshadow recommendation if your swatches didn’t look like the real thing? Just imagine how you would feel if that gorgeous purple shirt you ordered online arrived at your house an awful shade of blue.

Bottom line is, color is important. Knowing how color can go wrong will help you get it right.

The cause of problems:

Two of the most common problems I see in color digital photography are incorrect white balance, and poor (or no) color management. Both are easy to understand and easier to fix.

White balance in a Nutshell

Digital photos are made up of just a few basic colors mixed together in different ways. Different kinds of light require a different mix of those colors to make the photo look real. That’s why digital cameras often have options for light sources including Sun, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Fluorescent, and sometimes others. Choosing one of these options lets your camera know how it should mix the basic colors to make your photos look their best. Choosing Automatic mode lets your camera decide what kind of light you’re in and what it should be doing with colors. When the wrong mix of colors is used, photos can end up too yellow, blue, green and even pink.

If your camera gets it wrong, don’t sweat it. White balance is often easy to fix. If you start shooting in RAW it will always be easy to fix. (Unlike JPEGs which lock in your camera’s white balance decisions, RAW files can be changed after you take the picture. Pretty cool.) I have an article on correcting the white balance of your photos whether you take JPEGs or RAW. See, wasn’t that easy?

Next up is Color Management.

No, this won’t require a business degree. Or any degree. Here’s color management in a nutshell.

Different devices like cameras, computers, monitors, and printers read and produce colors in very different ways. In order to get the thing you saw with your eyes to go from camera to computer to print (or the web) and still look the same, there has to be some translation along the way. Color management gives you that translation. Now here’s the trick. There are different color spaces» to choose from. Some are big, they can use a whole lot of colors, like the big 64 box of crayons and some are smaller like the 12 crayon box. And there’s not a “right one”. But there are better and worse ways to use the different options. Here’s a couple of options.

If you’re just starting out and you want to keep things really simple, use a color space called sRGB. It’s a smaller color space (like the 12 pack of crayons) but it can still produce very nice and accurate looking pictures. It’s the easiest way to go since nearly every device will be able to produce the colors in this color space. Since every device will be on the same page your picture will look the same no matter where you look at it. And you won’t have to do special correction or adjustments when you move between devices, like going from your desktop to the web.

If your camera has the option, choose sRGB as the color space. If you don’t have the option to choose, your camera is probably using sRGB anyway. If you use GIMP  the default color space is sRGB (scroll down to point 1.2.1 Input). Now you’re all set.

The other option is to use a big color space (more like the 64 pack of crayons) in your camera and then make adjustments as you go. The idea is that if your original file has lots of colors you’ll have more information to use and more options to choose from. Not a bad idea, but it can get tricky. You’ll have to convert and adjust your photos as you transfer them to different devices.

For example: Internet browsers generally use sRGB. When you switch from the big color space to a smaller color space colors often get lost in the translation. Imagine the crayons. To switch from the big 64 pack of crayons to the 12 pack, internet browsers will just use the closest crayon available. But sometimes the closest crayon isn’t the most accurate looking color. Sometimes a mix of two or three colors is a better match. Sometimes adding some contrast or other adjustments makes the photo look more like the original too. Straight conversion from a big color space to a small color space is rarely exact so you’ll have to make those extra adjustments yourself to avoid losing quality.

And you have to remember to change your color space every time too. Otherwise your photos may end up looking dull and lifeless.

If you’re interested in this option, choose either Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB from your camera’s menu.  If you don’t have the option check your camera’s documentation. It may tell you what color space the camera uses by default (though it’s most likely sRGB). You can even set up GIMP to use one of these larger color spaces so all of your devices are on the same page.

More details on color to come. Next up is color in composition. Stay Tuned!

eggs, originally uploaded by LandKat.

While I’m working on my posts about color in digital photography, I thought I would give you a taste of what I’ll be talking about.

This photo is nice because the colors are simple and correct. The eggs look like eggs, and the parsley looks like parsley. Imagine the same photo with a greenish tint. Or with a blue color cast. It might be cool for fine art, but it’s not as appetizing as the true to life colors are.

For this food shot, choosing the correct white balance, and getting the correct exposure were key. The white balance was set to “Sun” for bright south window light. This kept the photo from looking too blue, or too orange. If the eggs were too dark it might look unappetizing. I used a white foam board to bounce the window light back into the shadows and keep the photo nice and bright.

If you want people to think “Oh, Yum!” when they look at your food photos, and not, “Oh, No!”, taking a little time to get the color right will get you headed in the right direction.

More details to come. Stay tuned!

Think your photos might have a Color Cast»   but you’re not quite sure? Use the Filter Pack in GIMP to check your photo.

The Filter Pack makes 6 copies of your photo. Each copy has a little color added to it. One has a little Green added to it, the next has Yellow added, another gets Red, the next gets Magenta, another gets Blue, and the last gets a little Cyan. These variations are displayed in a circle around the original.

When you add Yellow to Blue, they cancel each other out. Same with adding Green to Magenta. In fact, each of the colors has it’s opposite. (Red’s opposite is Cyan.) So here’s the cool part: If you have a digital photo with a Green color cast and you add a little Magenta, the color cast goes away.

When you look at the variations around your original they will each have a color cast. But if one of them looks more natural than the original, it means your original has a color cast, and the added color of the variation canceled it out. If you think something is off in your photo’s colors this is a great way to check.

This is also a useful trick when you know something’s off but you can’t tell what color is causing the problem. For example, a Red color cast can look very similar to a Magenta cast but adding Green (Magenta’s opposite) to a photo with a Red cast won’t fix the problem. Using the Filter Pack in this situation is a more organized way of figuring out the problem than adjusting sliders using Colors > Color Balance.

Ready to try out the Filter Pack? Here’s how:

1 Open your Photo in GIMP

I always duplicate the Background Layer first

Then duplicate the Background layer. Need to know how? Click here!»   We want to make changes to the new layer, called Background Copy. Make sure it’s highlighted in blue.

Duplicating the Background layer is a good habit to get into when editing. In this tutorial, it’s especially important b/c we might need to adjust the opacity of the Background Copy layer later on.

2 Check the Variations

In the Main Window, go to Colors > Filter Pack. A window called Filter Pack Simulation will appear.

The Roughness slider controls how different the variations are from the original. Since we’re checking for a slight color cast it should be set quite low. Starting at 0.05 should do the trick.

Now, under the Windows heading, select Hue. Your variations will pop up in a new window called Hue Variations.

The original is in the center and the variations are around it. I can tell immediately that Red and Magenta variations make the photo look worse, not better. I see that Blue is too, well, blue, and so is Cyan. Yellow looks a bit too warm. On my monitor Green looks the most neutral.

Click on the variation that looks best to you. There’s no OK for this window. Just close it. Click OK in the Filter Pack Simulation window to apply the filter to your Background Copy layer.

*NOTE: Clicking on variations adds that filter without removing the last filter you added. If you click first on Green then on Red you’re adding both the Green and Red filters. If you need to reset to your original, exit the Hue Variations window and click Reset in the Filter Pack Simulation window.

3 Check your Work

Use the eye icon to toggle between the original (Background layer) and the color corrected image (Background Copy). How do I do that?»

Now that you can see your photo full size it may look like you’ve over corrected. This is where the opacity slider comes in handy. Just lower the opacity of the Background Copy layer a little. This will the make the corrections you’ve made seem less intense.

Check out the Before and After of my strawberry photo. The photo below is the Before. Roll over it with your mouse to see the After.

The Magenta color cast wasn’t obvious at first.   Using the Filter Pack made it a lot easier to spot. Toggling between the Before and After makes the Magenta stand out that much more.

Are you a beauty or food blogger? Do you sell anything online? Getting color right for your readers is really important. What’s the point of swatching that new MAC lipstick if the colors don’t look the same in your photo as they do in real life? Accurate color will help make your food photos drool worthy too.  In the next few posts I’ll be covering color basics from getting it right in camera, to correcting when you forgot, and even making the right choices for your online photos.

Stay tuned!

 
 There are  a lot of free photo editors out there. Some are tools you use online, and others are programs that you use on your desktop. Most let you make very basic adjustments to your photos. A few allow you to use very advanced and creative techniques. Some are even linked in to popular photo sharing websites, like Flickr, and Facebook.

So, which one is right for you?

I looked at 5 of the most popular free photo editing programs available to show you the differences and help you make the choice. Check out each photo editor’s description, then use the table at the end of the post to compare options, tools, system requirements and more.

All of these programs can handle basic adjustments to brightness, contrast, and color. They can also handle red eye, rotate, crop and re-size photos. Click on each section’s header to go directly to the photo editor’s website.

FotoFlexer

This online editor has a ton of pre-set image adjustments to make your photos “works of art” fast. It’s integrated with Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket, PhanPhare, and even Yahoo Search. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use.

To give you an idea of what this program can do I first grabbed a photo directly from flickr and applied 8 different effects to it. Then I made this nifty collage right in FotoFlexer. The center of the collage is the original.

The collage could either be a grid of photos or a line of photos. Easy but not very exciting. The layout you choose will dictate how many photos you can add. For instance in this 3×3 grid I used 9 photos. I had 10 that I liked and there wasn’t a layout for 10 photos so I had to sacrifice one.

If you’re into animated effects this may be a fun program for you to check out. FotoFlexer is perfect for adding animated stickers, text, frames, and borders to your photos. MySpace is just the place for animated effects like this:

You can actually get pretty creative here using layers of effects and animation. I used a swirling distortion on the stars under the banner. (I used the same swirl on the daffodil at the top of this post) Because the stars, text and image are each on their own layer, it was easy to manipulate just the stars and not swirl the whole photo.

I really liked FotoFlexer once I started using it. I may even continue using it for the quick effects.

Picnik

Picnik is also an online application. It’s linked to other photo sharing sites like Flickr, Facebook, Picasa Web Albums, and a lot more. In fact, when you edit a photo inside flickr, you’re actually using Picnik. A Premium Upgrade option unlocks a lot more tools, effects, and stickers. But, this is about free editors so I won’t cover those.

An array of one click effects can dramatically transform your photos. There are frames and borders, stickers and text. I used the effects and made this collage in Picnik.

The options for making a collage for free in Picnik are limited. There are dedicated free photo collage sites that will give you a lot more control. I wouldn’t recommend upgrading Picnik just to get more collage options.

The card and scrapbook templates called “Fancy Collage” were fun to use. I made this recipe card using my own photos of food.

The frames, text, stickers and borders are just as nice if not nicer than FotoFlexer:

When applying a text or sticker you can choose a Blend Mode.»   I chose one that helped the Text stand out against the varied background. Stickers like these flowers can be resized and moved around.  But without Layers I couldn’t apply an effect just to the sticker.

I like Picnik. I use it occasionally when I’m in Filckr. There are even Picnik groups on flickr.  Once you’re done making your photos beautiful you can buy the prints…or mugs or posters, calenders and even books with your own photos. Hey, you saved some money by not buying a photo editor right?

LunaPic

If you’re into animated effects this is another program to check out.  It’s connected to MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook. I have suspicions that some animated badges and awards people use on flickr may come from LunaPic.

Like FotoFlexer and Picnik there’s an array of easy effects like these:

Here's an "Obama Style Poster" effect.

In this one I've used a Speech Balloon sticker with a text on top.

And here are some of those Animated Effects that would be so cool for MySpace and Flickr badges:

See the cool animated Kaleidoscope effect? No? Me neither. I couldn’t get animation to work after I saved the file. Photos that you save with a LunaPix account would presumably work. But they may be deleted after 90 days of inactivity.

There are more down sides. Some of the effects in LunaPix have no preview and the interface is clumsy. For example, I used the “Cosmetic Surgury” effect that enlarges or shrinks part of an image. You have these options to control the strength of the effect: “Reduce in size a little”, “Reduce some in size” , “Reduce in size a lot”, and “Reduce in size extreme”.  Couldn’t we just have a slider? And a preview so you know how far the effect will go?

Since I couldn’t get the animations to work properly, I feel like I’m missing out on the strong suit of this program. The clumsy interface makes this a program I would not personally use.

If you have experience with LunaPix please let me know! If I can get saved animations to work, I will gladly update this post.

iPhoto

It’s true. You can only use iPhoto if you have a Mac. But it’s a great free option for those of you that do. In fact, it’s the program I first started editing my photos with.

iPhoto is primarily for photo sharing but you can still edit your photos with it. It’s got all of the basic editing tools. You use it on your desk top and you can export directly to Facebook, Flickr or Mobile Me. There are only 9 one-click-effects. Think, sepia and black and white. They’re pretty “vanilla” so I didn’t make a collage of the effects.

You can create books, cards, and calendars out of your photos which can be purchased and professionally printed or saved as a free PDF.  Here are some examples.

This book cover was nice with my photo of persimmons.

This is the front and back of a card. Roll over it to see the inside.

I love that you can use your own images on the calander's dates.

If you just need to make minor touch ups and you don’t want to get too crazy with your digital art, iPhoto works well. And it certainly works well if you want to buy prints, books, and cards.

Picasa

(The above links to the Picasa for PC page. Picasa for Mac and for Linux can be accessed from links at the bottom of that page.)

Picasa is kind of like iPhoto, except anyone can use it. It’s a desktop application and it’s primarily for photo sharing. You can still make basic adjustments and you get 12 one-click-effects. Like iPhoto, the effects are pretty “vanilla”.  You can upload to a Picasa Web Album, YouTube, or Blogger  directly from the application.

I made this collage:

A Day in Santa Monica

I felt like I had much more control over the collage than in any other program I’ve mentioned here. But I still think I would want to open this up in either GIMP or PhotoShop to add captions to the “Polaroids”. There’s also a “Multiple Exposure” option that superimposes one picture over anther. The effect is cool but you get no options for how the photos blend together.  Ces’t la vie.

I thought iPhoto and Picasa were comparable. I like and would recommend both for light editing.

Still Deciding?

If you want instant gratification and no-brainer options one of the above editors will suit you just fine. Still need some help deciding? Lemme Break it down for you:

	Online or Desktop	One Click  Effects	Stickers/Text	Layers	Linked to which Photo Sharing Sites	File Types	Mac/PC
FotoFlexer	Online	25	Both	yes	Facebook, Flickr, PhanPhare, Picasa Web Albums, Photo Bucket, Myspace, SmugMug	JPEG, GIF, PNG	Both
Picnik	Online	30	Both	no	Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Photo Bucket, Myspace, Webs, Webshot	JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF	Both
LunaPic	Online	35+	Both	no	Facebook, Flickr, Myspace	JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF	Both
iPhoto	Desktop	9	None	no	Facebook, Flickr, Mobile Me	JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, RAW	Mac
Picasa	Desktop	12	Text	no	Picasa Web Albums, Youtube, Blogger	JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, RAW, BMP, PSD	Both

Want the ultimate in control and flexibility? Download GIMP. It will take a little longer to get some effects, but the level of control is soo worth it.

Want to know more? Think I left something out? Let me know! and while you’re at it, subscribe already, you know you want to!

purple clover, originally uploaded by LandKat.

The new PhotoShelter Widget from Johan at Nio Photography is ready for the public! I know I’m using a lot of exclamation marks. But it’s pretty exciting when you get exactly what you want. And this widget is exactly what I wanted for my sidebar.

The Widget uses your gallery’s rss feed to generate thumbnails that link back to the original photo. The entire widget is highly customizable. I took advantage of that for the first month or so that I used the widget. The newest release of the PhotoShelter RSS Gallery Widget looked so great “out of the box” I didn’t really change it at all.

Another plus is the great documentation this widget comes with. The “Read Me” file has got to be one of the most well written thorough “read me” files I’ve ever read. True Story.

Ok, enough from me. Go on over to Nio Photography and check out the widget. I know you want to.

A new contender for my Facebook Profile!

In my last post, 4 Free Ways to make your Profile Picture Better I talked about how you can easily refine your pictures with Picasa, Picnik, iPhoto and GIMP. For minor editing, programs like Picasa, Picnik and iPhoto are great. They have simple easy to understand interfaces but their tools are limited. To do more refined editing you need a program like GIMP. Don’t worry, GIMP’s still free, and it’s still easy.

With that in mind here’s 5 more tricks to make your profile picture look better. Once you’re done correcting small issues with my First Four Tips, finish up your photo by Whitening your Teeth, Brightening your Eyes, Smoothing your Skin, Softening your Wrinkles and Smile Lines, and Sharpening your Eyes to give them that extra Pop. It’s all Free and each Trick has just 3 easy steps.

1) Whiten Teeth

#1 Duplicate the Background Layer

Right Click (two finger tap on Mac) on the Background Layer, where the green arrow is pointing, and choose Duplicate Layer. This will make a Layer called Background Copy.

#2 Use the Fuzzy Select Tool to Select the Teeth

Double Click the Fuzzy Select Tool in the Toolbox Window. It looks like a wand. When the tool options window pops up Choose Select (the first square) under Mode. Then choose Feather 5px (more if your picture is really big, less if it’s small). Set the Threshold to around 10 to start.

Click on the teeth. A dotted line will appear. The dotted line is a selection. If it’s around all of your teeth and nothing else go to #3.

If it’s not around all of your teeth, hold the Shift Key and click again on a part of the teeth that didn’t get selected. If too much is selected, Go back to the tool options window. Under Mode choose Subtract from Selection (the third square- selected in the image above).  Lower the Threshold. Click on the part that shouldn’t be selected to remove it from the selection.

#3 Whiten

Go to Colors > Hue/Saturation from the Main Window. Choose Yellow from the Hue/Saturation window. Move the Saturation slider to the Left, and the Lighten Slider to the Right. Do the same for Red. This might make your teeth too blue. If it does, do the same for blue.  Click OK.

To get rid of the dotted line and see your whiter brighter teeth go to Select > None in the Main Window. Happy? Right Click the Background Copy Layer and choose Merge Down.

Roll over the image below to see the before and after-

That's way better than harmful bleaches.

*TIP* If you see an obvious line around your teeth, you probably need to Feather the Selection more. Go to Edit > Undo and go back to the perfect selection of your teeth. In the Fuzzy Select Tool options window under Feather choose a higher number.

2) Brighten Eyes

Your eyes are the window to your soul. This trick is the first step to really making them Pop.

#1 Duplicate the Background Layer

Right Click (two finger tap on Mac) on the Background Layer, where the green arrow is pointing, and choose Duplicate Layer. This will make a Layer called Background Copy.

#2 Lighten Irises with the Dodge Tool

Double Click the Burn/Dodge Tool from the Toolbox Menu. In the Tool Options Menu choose Type: Dodge, Range: Midtones and set the Exposure to a really low number, like 4 or 6. Use the tool to paint around the colored part of your eye. This will just brighten them a bit and make the color stand out.

From the Tool Options Menu choose Range: Highlights and paint over the light reflections in your eyes to make them really sparkle.

If the whites of your eyes look a bit dull, you can use the Dodge Tool there too to brighten them up a bit.

#3 Darken Pupil and eyelashes with the Burn Tool

Choose Type: Burn and Range: Shadows from the same Tool Options Menu. Now paint over your pupil (the black dot in the middle of your eye) and your eyelashes (if you like) to make these parts a bit darker.

The contrast between your lighter irises and darker pupils really makes your eyes look alive.

Check that you like the difference you’ve made by clicking the Eye Icon next to the Background Copy Layer. This will turn the edited layer’s visibility off, and let you see a “before”. Clicking again turns the layers visibility back on so you can see the “after”.

Like This- roll over the image to see the Before and After

Just a little extra Pop to make your eyes stand out.

Like it? Right click (two finger tap on Mac) the Background Copy Layer and choose Merge Down.

Next!

3) Smooth Skin

I love this effect. It really makes my pores look smaller and gives my skin a “soft focus” look without making everything else blurry.  Before you do this get rid of as many blemishes as you can with the Healing Tool.

#1 Duplicate the Background Layer

For the sake of anyone who forgot or is asleep-

Right Click (two finger tap on Mac) on the Background Layer, where the green arrow is pointing, and choose Duplicate Layer. This will make a Layer called Background Copy.

#2 Blur Everything

Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur from the Main Window. I’m sticking with the default settings on this. Play with the sliders until your skin looks smoother, but still like skin. People have pores and they make your skin look real so I don’t smooth them out completely. If you do, your skin will look like plastic.

#3 Un-Blur Stuff That’s Not Skin

So your skin looks great now but you don’t want Everything softened, just your skin, right?

Right Click (two-finger tap on Mac) the Background Copy Layer Icon and choose Add Layer Mask. In the Layer Mask Options Window that pops up, choose Black (full transparency). Click OK.

“Wait, now everything is un-blured. What’s going on here?!” I hear you asking.

Double click the Paintbrush Tool in the Toolox Menu. Use the Tool Options Window to make the Paintbrush Big and with Feathered Edge. Set the paintbrushes Opacity to around 50 to start.

Make sure your Foreground Color is set to White. Make sure your Layer Mask is selected (it will have a white border around it like it does in the image above.) Now, Paint on the skin you want to be softer looking and Ta Da!! It will get softer! To make the effect more pronounced, increase the Brushes Opacity from the Tool Options Menu and paint some more.

Here’s the Before and after (roll over the image below)-

This is subtle but so worth it.

*TIP*The effect doesn’t have to be as subtle as I’ve done here. You can use stronger settings in the Gaussian Blur Menu and use a Higher Opacity setting when you paint on the Layer mask to to soften more bumpy skin. But remember, we’re people, not Ken and Barbie dolls.

Happy? Right Click (two-finger tap on Mac) the Background Copy Layer Icon and choose Merge Down.

4) Soften Wrinkles

The clone tool copys a part of your image so you can paste it over another part. To soften wrinkles and lines, copy a part of skin that’s not wrinkled and paste it over parts that are wrinkled. Soften the effect and make it look more natural in the last step.

#1 Duplicate the Background Layer

Right Click (two finger tap on Mac) on the Background Layer, where the green arrow is pointing, and choose Duplicate Layer. This will make a Layer called Background Copy.

#2 Clone Over Lines and Wrinkles

Double Click the Clone Tool in the Toolbox Menu. It looks like a rubber stamp. In the Tool Options Menu that pops up make the brush big enough to paint over lines and wrinkles, and feathered by at least a few pixels. Set Alignment to None.

Hold the Control Key and click on a part of your image that is a similar color to the area around your lines and wrinkles. This sets the “source” or the part that is copied. Now “stamp” (paste) over the wrinkles by clicking on them.

You may need to re set the source to keep the color matched. Just hold Control and Click again on a more appropriately colored part of skin.

#3 Make it look Natural

So now you’re thinking I’m a hypocrite. In the last Trick I told you not to soften your skin too much because it doesn’t look real. Now I tell you to stamp out all the lines on your face. I know it doesn’t look natural now, but we’re getting to that.

In the Layers Dialogue lower the Opacity of the Background Copy Layer with the Opacity Slider (circled in Blue in the image above). 40% worked out for well for this picture. See? Now the lines are back on your face, they just look less harsh.

See the Difference? (Well, you will if you roll over the picture below)-

Once you lower the Opacity of the Background Copy Layer, everything looks real again.

All done with this tip? Right Click (two-finger tap on Mac) on the Background Copy Layer Icon and choose Merge Down.

5) Sharpen Eyes

Photographers always try to get a person’s eyes in focus b/c it’s the most important part of the picture. You can’t fix a blurry picture but you can make your eyes a little more crisp and sharp looking.

#1 Duplicate the Background Layer

But you already knew that.

Right Click (two finger tap on Mac) on the Background Layer, where the green arrow is pointing, and choose Duplicate Layer. This will make a Layer called Background Copy.

#2 Sharpen Everything

Go to Filters > Enhance > Unsharp Maks in the Main Window. Your settings will vary a lot depending on the picture. Play with the settings until the preview looks sharp but not weird. Click OK.

#3 Un-Sharpen Skin

We went through some effort to soften the skin in the picture and we want to keep it that way.

Right Click (two-finger tap on Mac) on the Background Copy Layer Icon and choose Add Layer Mask. In the Options Window that pops up choose Black (full transparency).

Double click the Paintbrush Tool in the Toolox Menu. Use the Tool Options Window to make the Paintbrush big enough to paint your eyes and with Feathered Edge. Set the paintbrushes Opacity to around 50 to start.

Make sure your Foreground Color is set to White. Make sure your Layer Mask is selected (it ill have a white border around it). Now Paint over your eyes to make them sharper.

In this example I painted a bit of my hair too and my eyebrows. It looks nice since they frame your eyes.

Check it out!! Roll over the image below to see the before and after-

This makes your eyes look a little more focused.

Like it? Right click on the Background Copy Layer Icon and choose Merge Down. You’re all done!

Before and After-

Roll over the image below to see the before and after of all 5 tricks.

All of these tricks make a big difference when you see them together.

That’s it! 5 easy ways to make your profile picture for Facebook, Twitter or anything else that much better.

There’s so much more coming up I can’t even pick something to tell you about. Keep up with all the excitement by Subscribing to Pare and Focus. 

Like My New Facebook Profile Picture?

You put your pictures on the internet for all the world to see. You look great in them. Or you look hilarious in them. Or they show you with someone you really dig. They’re really cool pictures. But did you know those pictures could look better? The digital photos you share on facebook and everywhere else can be transformed from fun snapshots to the kinds of pictures your mom wants framed and in the living room.

And here’s the best part, it’s easy and it’s free.

That’s right. You don’t have to shell out for Photoshop to edit your digital photos.  Programs like Picasa, iPhoto and Picnic let you fix a lot of common photo problems and even get a little creative with your digital artwork.  If you want a little more control GIMP is the free way to go. It’s often compared to Photoshop, and while it’s not the same thing it does offer the more advanced features that make Photoshop such a fun tool.

I’m not saying these tricks will replace a professional photographer when you need one. Because they absolutely won’t. But friends could be asking you what kind of camera you’re using, and where they can buy one, b/c they want pictures like that. Make em jealous. Here’s 4 ways to do it.

1) Adjust the White Balance

Correct White Balance is the magical mix that makes the colors in you pictures look like colors in real life. It makes white look really white in stead of blueish or yellowish… that’s why it’s called White Balance. You know your white balance is wrong when your picture looks too blue, yellow, green, or pink.

•  You can fix this really quickly in programs like Picasa, iPhoto, and Picnik,  by using the temperature and tint controls. Just nudge the sliders until the colors look like real life.
•   You can fix white balance if you’re using GIMP too. First try the one click fix: Go to Colors > Auto > White Balance. This should automatically correct your colors.
•   If you’re not happy with the one click fix try going to Colors > Color Balance and play with the controls until the color looks like real life.
•  For more details on white balance, look here.

This one little adjustment will do wonders for your photo. You could stop here. But I’m giving you more tips, so, um, don’t.

2) Get Some Exposure

As in, make a too dark picture brighter, and a too light picture darker.

•   In a program like Picassa, iPhoto, or Picnik, just play with the Exposure Slider, the Brightness/Contrast Slider , and Shadows and Highlights Sliders. They all make parts of your picture darker or lighter, they just do it different ways.
•   If you’re in GIMP using Colors > Brightness/Contrast is the most straight forward fix. Just adjust the sliders. You can also use Curves and Levels but they are a bit more advanced.

Don’t expect a miracle though. If parts of your photo are really dark, like black, no amount of adjusting is going to bring it back. Same for parts that are so light they are white.

3) Tackle Red Eye

Red eye can happen when you use a flash.

But with just a few clicks iPhoto removed the Red.

Red eye happens. Sometimes it’s funny. Like when your sweet baby sister looks like a daemon. Most of the time though, you want it gone.

•   In Picassa, iPhoto, Picnik, or something like it, there will be a Red Eye Tool. Use the tool to click on the red eye and it will magically disappear.
•  GIMP comes with a Red Eye fixer too. Go to Filters > Enhance > Red Eye Removal. Play with the slider.

4) Get Rid of Blemishes

While I kind of like the more natural look for fruit...

...you can easily remove blemishes like i did in iPhoto.

Yeah. I mean zits.

•   In Picasa, iPhoto, Picnik and the like just grab the Healing Tool and click over the blemish. Ta da! It’s like it was never there.
•   Same thing for GIMP.  The Healing Tool looks like a Band-Aid in GIMP.

You won’t be able to fix large patches of acne or bumpy textured skin with this trick. In my next post, 5 More Tricks to Make Your Profile Picture Better, I’ll give you an advanced trick to help smooth bumpy skin. Stay Tuned!

Other free photo editors to look for:

Photoscape

FotoFlexer

LunaPic