Easy Peasy Ways to Brighten Photos of Your Art
Mon, August 1, 2011 at 06:48PM Are you dealing with dark photos of your artwork? Not ready to take the plunge and learn photoshop or lightroom? I bet you wish you had a magic wand, a spell, a potion? Fixing your photos is just a few clicks away.
As with everything in the digital photo world, it is wise to have a backup of your original photos so you don't inadvertantly screw something up. Proceed at your own risk! When I first started editing digital photos I worked in Digital Image Pro, but my computer died and with it went my software. Then I worked in Picasa for a long time, jumped to Apple Aperture, and finally to Photoshop for the Mac.
Here are two options, Flickr/Picnik and Picasa.
1. Upload in Flickr and edit with Picnik.
After uploading the photo, click on it from your photostream and then click ACTIONS, EDIT PHOTO IN PICNIK.
Here are some things to try. It depends on the actual photo, of course, so play and learn.
Click AUTO FIX; that might provide a nice boost.
Click EXPOSURE and play with the contrast and brightness sliders.
CLICK EXPOSURE then ADVANCED and check the box next to LOCAL CONTRAST. Play with the STRENGTH slider.
You can also crop, straighten, resize and more in PICNIK.
2. Another super easy tool for brightening photos is GOOGLE PICASA for Mac or Windows. Download Picasa free, tell PICASA where to find your photos and it will populate your photos in PICASA.
Click on a photo to open it.
You'll see the "Basic Fixes" tab where you can adjust your photo, crop and straighten. Click on "I'm feeling lucky" and see if that does the trick to brighten your photos. If not, click the "Undo I'm feeling lucky" button.
Click on the "Tuning" tab and increase the highlights with the slider. Increase the shadows a bit if you wish.
BEFORE YOU SAVE, if you want to revert to the original, click PICTURE then UNDO ALL EDITS.
You can export your photo in a smaller size, so that it is ready to upload to flickr or your blog or G+ or FB or wherever! Just click FILE, then Export Picture to Folder. Name the folder or Picasa will name it "Export" for you. Select a width (the height will adjust proportionally) and quality. For a landscape oriented photo for blog and flickr I usually do 325px or 500px and Quality 100.
Hope this helps!
Reader Comments (4)
I use Picasa all the time. Never tried the "export" feature though.
Sophie
You can access Picnik direct from Picasa - but it always seems to work quicker for me by going via the website.
There are lots of other free on-line programs to try as well - I like Befunky, Postworkshop and Sumopaint, especially the kaleidoscope filter in the latter.
All have paid for versions which give you even more options.
No affiliation, just too much time on the computer due to insomnia.
Sophie, The export feature is fabulous for prepping for upload.
Thanks, Celia!
Oh my gosh.... I just read this and am so happy to see that flickr and picnik can link!!! I can't believe how much time I have taken previously to put it into picnik and then into flickr. What a time saver!!! Thank you!