Purebeads: Samples pictures

On this page I take a photo through the various stages of fixing it up for the internet. Please note that I used
Paint Shop Pro 10 to do this. The steps you would take are somewhat different in Adobe Photoshop Elements.
To fully appreciate the comments, you will need to pan to the right to look at the larger photos.

Original photo. Here is the picture as it came out of the camera. The camera was set to take a full-sized image
(no optical or digital zoom), with the least compression (Superfine setting), and was set on Macro (for close-ups).
I also had Exposure Compensation increased so the picture wouldn't be too dark (but it still came out a little dark).
The picture is a good one, though the beads at either end are a little blurry. I used daylight from the window.

Adjust color balance. The picture came out with a very slight greenish color cast. Although the cast is slight,
I still decided to fix it, for which I used the Color Balance feature of my photo-editing program (sometimes called
"White Balance"). Commonly, digital pictures will come out too yellow, too blue or – as in this case – a little green.
If your photo-editing program doesn't have a Color Balance feature, you'll have to manually adjust the red, green or blue
color channels until the picture looks right. If you took the picture on a white background, then adjust the picture until
the background looks neutral.

Crop off excess. Then I cropped off the excess image around the beads:

Remove digital noise (grain). If your picture comes out looking noisy or grainy, you may want to remove the noise.
Digital noise or grain is common with point-and-shoot digital cameras. The picture above is mostly noise-free, so I didn't
need to adjust it. However, here is an example of a picture with too much digital grain:

Picture with digital grain:

With grain mostly removed:

Grain usually occurs only in dark areas of a picture, but a poorly designed camera can have grain in light areas. You only
need to remove the grain if it is very heavy since much of it will disappear when the picture is reduced. Removing grain
makes the picture look blurrier, but that won't be noticeable when you reduce and then sharpen the picture.

Lighten or darken photo. If your photo is too dark, you'll need to lighten it; or if your photo is too light, you'll need
to darken it. In this case, the actual beads are lighter than the picture indicates, so I had to lighten the photo. Paint Shop
Pro has a feature called Histogram Adjustment (it was called Gamma Correction in previous versions). It lightens and
adds contrast at the same time, so I used that feature on this picture. Both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements have
a Lighten Shadows feature which often works well. Important: Please note that the colors of the beads become brighter
when the picture is lightened.

Add contrast. After you have lightened your picture, you may need to add contrast (this won't be necessary if you
darkened it). This picture doesn't need a lot of contrast, but contrast is good because it makes a picture look less dull and
hazy, so I used some. Please note that using contrast also makes the colors in a picture look brighter. If you use the
Lighten Shadows feature, adding contrast may not be necessary.

Reduce color saturation. This is an often-neglected step, even by professionals, but it is very important.
Lightening and then adding contrast to a picture will make the colors in the picture become too bright and saturated.
You fix that by reducing the color saturation. I compared the actual beads to the picture above and saw that the color
of the beads was not so bright and rich, so I reduced the color saturation. The picture below is the way the beads
actually look (the difference is most visible if you look at the beads in the middle of the bunch). Not all photo-editing
programs have a color-saturation feature.

Reduce (re-size) the picture for the web. Then I shrank the picture to 900 pixels wide. 900 pixels is rather large,
but it was necessary so the customer could see the details. Since most customers look only at the thumbnail picture, it is
okay to post a large picture like this. When resizing a picture, if you are unhappy with the amount of re-sizing you apply,
just click the Undo button and try again. When resizing, you have to make sure the photo keeps the same "aspect ratio"
(proportions). Most photo-editing programs do that for you automatically.

Sharpen photo. Now the picture has to be sharpened. Sharpening is always necessary after reducing a picture's size.
Sharpening makes all the difference, as it makes the item look more real. Please note that even if your camera produces
sharp pictures, you'll need to re-sharpen the picture after resizing it.

Add text (optional). Then add text if you want. This is the finished photo:

Add JPG compression. After working on a photo, you will want to save the picture on your hard drive as a "master"
in a non-compressed format (such as TIF or PNG) and then save a copy to the directory that will be uploaded to the
internet in the JPG format. When saving the JPG copy, your program will give you the option of applying a lot of
compression (which reduces the file size a great deal but makes the picture look blurry) or a little compression (which
reduces the file size less but keeps the picture looking clear). I am a firm proponent of posting clear pictures, so I
compress photos only 6% in Paint Shop Pro (that's enough to cut the file size in half). Please note that Photoshop
Elements uses a completely different scale.

The picture above was saved with 6% compression. The picture below is how it looks when saved with 30%
compression – too blurry, in my opinion (if you can't see a difference, you may not have a good monitor, or the
resolution of your monitor may be set very high, which tends to hide certain details). If these were darker beads, the
blurring from the compression would be more apparent.

Make thumbnail. When you post the picture on your site, you may want to use a thumbnail which the customer will
click on to see the full-sized image. A good technique is to use just a portion of the picture as the thumbnail (instead of
shrinking the entire image). On the left, below, is a thumbnail made from a portion of the picture. On the right is the entire
picture shrunk to thumbnail size. I think the thumbnail on the left is much better. If you are making a thumbnail of a
necklace, then put the pendant or a focal bead in the thumbnail.

Here is another example of using a portion of an image as the thumbnail: