I should not only criticize, but I should also help – thought after my last post about photography. Evidently, some people posting photos on the internet don’t know even the photo editing basics, not even the possibilities of their own phones. This is for them, readers with photo modification knowledge may want to skip this post.

Can’t raise the dead

So, you can improve your photos, but don’t expect wonders: if a photo is bad from birth, it will never win awards on contests. But if you have a photo with a nice or interesting theme, or something unique, an irrecoverable moment, family event, only with some errors, sometimes it’s worth to correct it. First make two or three secure copies of your photo, and experiment freely.

Many modern types of equipment have some options already built-in. In my Android phone, for example, there are approximately 20 color effects, like sepia, Gothic black, negative, vintage, sunset, yellow etc. The most of them, ugly, but some can be nice. In many cases the colors are only disturbing, the shapes and form of the theme is the essence, you should use black & white or sepia, anyway.

Google's work, Android screenshot

Ultimately, Google Photos also has a series of effects, you can see in the photo. (Google Photos can store an unlimited amount of photos and videos for free if you agree to some resolution limits. And don’t have privacy concerns I wrote about here.) Maybe the best or most real is the one called “auto”: It doesn’t make the photo unreal, artificial, only optimizing colors, contrast.

Google Photos

Automated solutions

But computers and advanced software packages have mostly much more options than phones. Programs like Adobe Photoshop or the free Gimp 2 need mostly a lot of memory, or even better, an SSD drive. And decent processor power. If you don’t have a good computer, you can use some lightweight free software, like IrfanView.

If you don’t like the colors and you are a novice, you should look first the color automating option of your machine or software. This can have different names: It was the menu command “Auto levels” in Photoshop (I know only old versions), “Image/Auto adjust colors” in IrfanView. In Gimp, try, for example, “Colors/Auto/Equalize”, or “Colors/Auto/Stretch contrast”.

Tons of effects

Programmers know the more important and nice tricks used to modify pictures and they have them built in their software. In IrfanView, you find a lot of options in the menu “Image/Effects” and “Image/Effects/Effects browser”. In Gimp, these are in the “Filters” menu. Most effects have adjustments, like strength or radius, color or direction, like this fisheye-strength slider below:

IrfanView

Which filter/effect to apply? That depends on the photo. I’m sure there are a lot of descriptions, guides, but I think it’s better to experiment. I, personally, love to experiment, play around with the effects and options. Maybe something unexpectedly nice turns out. (Don’t use wrong colors, calibrate your screen if necessary.)

Art and reason

But don’t think you are making arts. In most cases, you will be only saving a bad photo for the family album, and that’s right so. Many famous photographers are never using any effects, or only some natural ones like “Black and white”, “Levels”. Too much or too strong effects can appear artificial, unpleasant, selfish, even offensive (“art for art's sake”).

Ask yourself before you show your work to the public: Is the new photo better than the old one? Is it really good enough or only less bad? Is the theme interesting, or only the colors turned out funny? Is it interesting for me, for my family or for anyone? What am I showing, what do I want to say with this picture?

(No, I’m never posting art, only travel photos.)

IrfanView