Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Photos with too much flash

If you got a little too close in a flash photo, Paint Shop Pro may be able to help you back off a bit. Try this fast fix:

1. Choose Adjust --> Brightness and Contrast --> Automatic Contrast Enhancement.

The Automatic Contrast Enhancement dialog box comes to your aid.

2. To make the picture darker, click Darker (on the left).

3. To reduce contrast, click Natural (on the right).

You can try Flat, too, but it's often too flat.

4. For the maximum darkening, contrast-reducing effect, click Normal (in the center).

For a lesser effect, click Mild.

5. Click OK.

Photos with way too much flash are washed out, which may be harder to fix. If, for example, portions of someone's face are practically white, you need to restore skin tone without affecting the rest of the picture. A little work with the Smudge tool can help you push skin color into small white areas. Alternatively, try carefully selecting the entire face area with a feathered edge and then using the Manual Color Correction effect to change the white area to skin tone.

Removing unwanted Items

You can use Paint Shop Pro tricks to remove unwanted features, like power lines or passing automobiles.

The task requires some skill and some sort of continuous or repeated background, like the clapboarded side of a building, a grassy field, a rail fence, water, or shrubbery. If the unwanted relative is blocking more than half of some unique feature (like a fireplace, chair, or china cabinet), the job gets nearly impossible.

The main tool for the job is the Clone Brush tool, which you use to extend the background over the unwanted feature. For example, you can brush out junk on a lawn by brushing lawn, taken from just below or alongside the junk.

Here's the general idea:

1. Click the Clone Brush tool (two-brush icon) on the Tools toolbar.

2. Right-click the background you want to brush over your object, in an area that has no unique features.

For example, if you're removing lawn junk, right-click in the grass, not near other junk. Don't click too near the object you want to remove, either. Because backgrounds tend to have horizontal strips of stuff, like grass at the bottom, trees in the middle, and sky at the top, clicking to the left or right of the object you want to remove usually works best.

3. Drag carefully across the object you want removed.

If, in Step 2, you right-clicked to the left or right of that object, move the cursor only horizontally before you drag. That precaution ensures that you extend the correct strip of background and don't paint grass, for example, where you want trees. As you brush, the Clone Brush tool picks up pixels from under an X that starts where you right-clicked and follows your motion. Keep an eye on the X to make sure that it doesn't pick up pixels you don't want. You may need to reset the X in a new location periodically; return to Step 2 to do so.

You probably need some trial and error to get a feel for the process. Press Ctrl+Z to undo any errors.

One problem with removing relatives and other objects is that if they were initially blocking a unique object, that object now has a hole in it. For example, the relative may well be blocking one arm of a person or half of a piano (if that relative is fairly wide). Fortunately, many objects are symmetrical; if Aunt Katy's left arm is now missing, you may be able to copy her right arm and paste it in place of the left one. (You can even mirror half a face to make a whole one in some instances. Results may be unsatisfactory.)

Use any selection tool (the Freehand tool, for example) to select the object you need to copy. Press Ctrl+F to float the selection, press Ctrl+M to mirror it, drag it to the correct position, and then press Ctrl+Shift+F to defloat it. Press Ctrl+D to remove the selection marquee. You may need to do a little painting and retouching because any light striking the object is now coming from the wrong direction.

Paint Shop Pro Hints and Tips: Noise Removal

Removing Noise (Speckles) with Paint Shop Pro 8

Removing noise from an image sounds a bit illogical, like subtracting apples from oranges or removing odor from a TV program. Okay, you can perhaps imagine ways to do the latter, but apply that same imagination to how your TV looks when you run a vacuum cleaner: The screen is covered with speckles. That's graphical noise: pixels altered at random locations and in random colors.

The trick with removing speckles is to avoid removing freckles — and other speckly stuff that's supposed to be in the picture. (Unless, of course, you want to get rid of the freckles!) For that reason, Paint Shop Pro offers several choices, depending on what you need. Choose Adjust --> Add/Remove Noise and then one of these menu selections:

Despeckle: Removes smaller, isolated speckles altogether. Good for removing a light coating of dust. Speckles that are closer to each other tend to form clumps, however.

Edge-Preserving Smooth: Gives an effect like rubbing carefully within the shaded areas of a pastel drawing, using your finger. Speckles disappear into a uniform shade, and you keep the sharp edges of those larger areas. This effect is also good for removing the random discoloration of pixels that often results from shooting digital photos in low light. In the adjustment dialog box that appears, drag the Number of Steps slider to the right to make a smoother image.

Edge-Preserving Smooth, turned up high, creates a nice oil-painting-like effect on photos!

Median Filter: Removes speckles by removing fine detail, a kind of blurring process in which each pixel is recalculated to be the average of its neighbors. Contrast is lost at the detail level. An adjustment dialog box appears in which you drag the Amount of Correction slider to the right to remove increasingly large details.

Salt-and-Pepper Filter: Removes speckles of a particular size (or up to a particular size) you choose. A Salt-and-Pepper Filter adjustment dialog box appears, with these adjustments:

• Speck Size: Adjust this value to match or slightly exceed the size of the speckles you're trying to get rid of. (You may have to zoom in close to figure out how big your speckles are.)

• Sensitivity to Specks: If the right preview window shows clusters of specks remaining, increase this value. Too high a value blurs your photo.

• Include All Lower Speck Sizes: Enable this check box to remove specks of Speck Size and smaller. Otherwise, you just remove specks close to Speck Size.

• Aggressive Action: Enable this check box to remove specks more completely. Otherwise, you may simply reduce the specks' intensity.

Texture-Preserving Smooth: This effect sounds like a sophisticated grade of peanut butter. Actually, it blurs and reduces the contrast of tiny specks while preserving the larger variations that give texture to grass, wood, water, and the like. The result is sort of like a crunchy peanut butter without small, gritty chunks. An adjustment dialog box appears in which you adjust the Amount of Correction value upward to minimize specks.

Add Noise: Why would you want to add noise? If you're trying to make a photo look older or give it a rusty patina or an overlay of static, you can seed your image with random pixels. Drag the slider to the right to obscure your image in a haze of dots. There are three Add Noise selections, each of which deals with color placement:

• Random: The noise colors are — surprise! — chosen at random from the available color palette. If you have a black-and-white image, don't expect to see red pixels, although you could see garish orange and purple pixels in a mostly green picture.

• Uniform: The noise colors are all chosen from within the image itself, making this option perfect for "olderizing" a picture.

• Gaussian: Choose this option for a more static-like effect.

You can always select an area using the Paint Shop Pro selection tools, in order to add or remove noise from only that specific area.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/removing-noise-speckles-with-paint-shop-pro-8.html#ixzz1PzndCfxF

Paint Shop Pro Hints and Tips: Magic Wand Tool

Sometimes you want to select an area so uniform in appearance that you want to simply tell Paint Shop Pro, "Go select that red balloon" or whatever it is. To you, with your human perception, the area is an obvious thing of some sort. In software, anything that even slightly mimics human perception is often called magic. The Magic Wand selection tool is no exception. It can identify and select areas of uniform color or brightness, somewhat as your eye does.

One benefit of this tool is that you can select areas with complex edges that would be a pain in the wrist to trace with the Freehand tool. For instance, a selection of blue sky that includes a complex skyline of buildings and trees would be relatively easy with the Magic Wand tool.

The Magic Wand tool doesn't, however, work as well as your eye. In particular, if the color or brightness of the area you're trying to select isn't uniform or doesn't contrast strongly with the surroundings, the selection is likely to be spotty or incomplete or have rough edges.

Making the selection

To make a selection, select the Magic Wand from the Selection toolset. Your cursor takes on the Magic Wand icon. Click the Magic Wand cursor on your image, and it selects all adjacent pixels that match (or nearly match) the pixel you clicked. (Note that the selection does not include isolated pixels — pixels that, even though they match, are separated from the place you clicked by nonmatching pixels.)

To get the selection you want when you use the Magic Wand tool, consult the Tool Options palette. It lets you define (by using the Match mode list) exactly what you mean by match and lets you adjust (by adjusting the Tolerance setting) how closely the selected pixels should match the one you clicked.

If your image uses layers, be sure that the active layer is the one containing the area you want to
select. Enable the Sample Merged check box on the Tool Options palette so that the Magic Wand tool examines all layers combined. Otherwise, the Magic Wand tool selects a totally wrong area, and you wonder what's happening!

Choosing Match mode for better results

Click the Match Mode list box and you can choose exactly how you want Paint Shop Pro to select the pixels around the place you clicked.

Some of the choices are shown in this list:

RGB Value: When you choose this option, you tell Paint Shop Pro to "select pixels that match in both color and brightness." Clicking a red apple using this choice may select only the highlighted side where you clicked, for instance. Technically, it selects all adjacent pixels with red (R), green (G), and blue (B) primary color values that match the one you clicked.

Hue: You're telling Paint Shop Pro to "select pixels that match in color" when you choose Hue. Hue, however, is somewhat more independent of brightness than the RGB value. Clicking on a red apple with this choice is more likely to select the entire apple than if you chose RGB Value. Technically, it selects all adjacent pixels with hues (in the Hue/Saturation/Lightness color system, or color wheel) that match the hue of the pixel you clicked.

Brightness: Brightness disregards color and selects all adjacent pixels whose brightness matches the one you clicked. This choice is useful for selecting things that are similarly illuminated, like shadows and highlights, or that are in a notably light or dark color compared with the background.

Opacity: Opacity, if you're not paying attention, is a measure of how transparent your image is. Opacity mode selects anything that's suitably close to the transparency of the selected pixel.

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background

All Opaque: This option is a special choice for when you're working on an image that has transparent areas — areas of no content whatever — usually displayed with a checkered background. It tells Paint Shop Pro to select the area that has content around the pixel where you clicked. For instance, you may have photos of various air freshener products on a transparent layer, artistically floating over a cow pasture in the background. With this choice, you can just click one of the products to select it in its entirety.

Experiment to get the mode that works best for you! Press Ctrl+D to deselect each failed experiment, change match modes, and click again with the Magic Wand tool.

Setting tolerance to include more or fewer pixels

The Tolerance setting on the Tool Options palette helps you determine how much of an area is selected by the Magic Wand tool. You may have to undo your selection with Ctrl+D, adjust the tolerance, and click again with the Magic Wand tool several times to get the best selection possible.
Tolerance tells Paint Shop Pro how closely the pixels it selects should match the pixel you clicked —in RGB value, hue, or brightness, depending on which match mode you chose. (Tolerance doesn't matter for All Pixels match mode. A pixel either has content or it doesn't.) Here's how it works:

Lower the tolerance value to make a less extensive selection the next time you click.

Raise the tolerance value to make a more extensive selection the next time you click.

In Paint Shop Pro, low tolerance means that the Magic Wand tool tolerates little variation in color or brightness from the pixel you clicked. The tolerance value itself has no particular meaning; it's just a number.

The Tolerance value box on the Magic Wand tool's Tool Options palette has a clever adjustment feature you find in similar boxes throughout Paint Shop Pro. As with these types of boxes in any Windows program, you can type a value (from 0 to 200) in its text box or click its up or down arrow to adjust the value. We find that the best way is to click the down arrow, or Clever adjustment feature, and hold your mouse button down. A tiny slider appears that you can drag left or right to set the tolerance value lower or higher.

Tolerance can be a sensitive and picky adjustment. A small change can sometimes make a big difference in what gets selected. Unless you're trying to select an area well differentiated by color, brightness, or content, you probably have to adjust your selected area afterward.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/waving-the-magic-wand-tool.html