Image processing is actively used in photography, modeling, printing and publishing articles on the Internet. There are lots of options, methods, tools and methods for performing this process. Some of them will be discussed in this article.
Digital image processing: what is needed and where is it used
The tasks of image processing include giving them a look in which they will most vividly and clearly reflect reality or, conversely, distort it. For example, preparing photos from a wedding allows you to remove unnecessary elements, brighten up the appearance of guests, the bride and groom. When processing, it is especially important to eliminate the red-eye effect and tighten the figure.
Creating collages also does not do without post- and pre-processing. With their help, you can draw pictures that could not happen in reality.
Adjustment of graphic content is received from both digital cameras and image processing devices, such as scanners or webcams.
There are several universal methods for preparing pictures for future projects. Of the main, the following can be distinguished:
- white balance
- exposure correction;
- noise processing;
- elimination of distortion;
- detailing;
- contrast processing;
- composition;
- retouch;
- the size;
- sharpness at the exit.
Perfect white balance is the key to high-quality pictures
Color rendering is of great importance for the perception of the picture. Image processing for white balance gives them real color and reality.
Very often, digital cameras, by default, incorrectly or distortedly transmit color to the picture. White balance can be adjusted using the heat sliders. Some image processing programs even have a separate mode for this purpose.
The exposition is not only in the camera, but also in processing
The settings of various digital cameras allow you to set the ideal exposure at the shooting stages. However, this is not always possible. Therefore, you have to fix it with the help of the subsequent image processing.
In particular, by changing the contrast and tone, you can give the picture a natural color and incident light. The necessary elements should be properly shaded, and those in the rays of light should be naturally lit, without excess.
Noise Processing - Eliminate Unnecessary
High photosensitivity can cause noise in the picture. They are expressed, as a rule, by a small "rash" of artifacts. You can eliminate them at the stage of processing graphic images. Noise reduction should be applied wisely, since too few of them will make the picture unnatural.
Distortions
Wide-angle and telephoto lenses can produce small changes in the geometry of the picture. Their correction can be claimed when aligning the layout or printing. For a panorama of a landscape, for example, distortion does not incur large losses.
Detailing allows you to see everything
This method is based on sharpening. That is, processing the image so that the distinguishability of objects in the picture improves. Sharpness, in turn, is determined by two factors - resolution and clarity. The first parameter describes the number of elements located at a minimum distance. The second expresses the degree of blurring of the boundaries between objects. The sharper they are, the more detailed the photo or picture looks.
Contrast - highlights key features and details
The contrast expresses the difference between the different colors of various objects in the photo. If it is tall, they are very visible to the eyes and look more impressive. On the other hand, too much contrast can make the image unnatural. Perfectly balanced, it gives the picture a richness, while leaving it lively.
Composition
The composition may include several image processing methods. One of them is cropping. It is characterized by the selection of the most important sections from the drawing and the emphasis on the horizon and focuses on them. This is true when photographing landscapes, when you need to remove an extra piece of sky or earth.
Retouching - a common method
Retouching is a set of measures to eliminate camera defects and various artifacts from images. The core of this method is usually selective correction. It is expressed in the manual elimination of dust particles from the lens, zonal noise correction and similar methods.
The size
This method can give the image both greater and lesser significance. With the increase, interpolation is usually used, that is, the replacement of the nearest points is approximately similar. This can come in handy when printing banners or posters.
Reducing without processing can give the picture an unnatural moire. Therefore, you need to apply resizing after carrying out image processing.
Image processing software
There are many software image processing systems. All of them differ in a set of functionality, support for additional features and price.
GIMP - Free and Powerful
One of the best graphic editors. You can download it for free from the developers site. This product, although non-profit, has great potential. Processing vector graphics, working with layers, connecting a large number of plug-ins, using the RAW format.
In addition to all this, GIMP has a large Russian-speaking community where you can find out a lot of useful information and tricks. The program also has Russian language.
Adobe Photoshop - a true graphics processor
The name of this product has long been a household name. Saying the phrase "photoshop", a person makes it clear that he needs to process the image. And it doesn’t matter if it is really Adobe Photoshop or another graphics processing program.
With the help of this powerful tool, many masters create such bright and natural masterpieces that it is very difficult to distinguish them from a good photograph.
However, the study of Photoshop is not an easy task and requires a considerable amount of time. The program interface has a huge number of settings, functions, techniques and tools. Dealing with it is very difficult.
PhotoScape
Few have heard of this product, except for professional designers and photographers. Perhaps its use makes it difficult to lack such a convenient tool as layers that allow you to quickly copy and overlay images on top of each other.
Among the advantages of the program are free distribution, Russian localization, plug-ins connection and RAW support.
Picasa
This product was developed by Google. The program is easy to learn, has a simple interface. Perfect for primary processing of images at home. Professionals will see in this program a large number of missing tools.
The application is free, but Google has stopped supporting it since 2016. You can use the latest versions.
Paint.net
A kind of reincarnation of the regular editor of the Windows operating system - Paint. It can work with layers, has a set of plug-ins. Many interesting tools and features.
Ideal for introducing into the world of professional image processing .
Coreldraw
Paid product. Due to the fact that its main focus is vector images, it is used almost everywhere. This and a variety of layouts for printing, modeling, building design and ordinary drawings. Due to its wide distribution, it has a significant number of ready-made plug-ins. The program is Russified.
Online processing
Recently, online image processing is gaining popularity. This method has many advantages:
- Processing speed. All calculations are performed on the server side, which is usually much more powerful than a home computer.
- Simplicity. Just upload an image or provide a link, and you can proceed. To do this, there is a large set of ready-made tools, not much inferior to many offline editors.
- Availability. Wherever a person is, no matter how weak a computer is, online editors are always available on the Internet.
- Support for many formats and converting them on the fly.
Conclusion
Talking about the best methods used for image processing is a little rhetorical. After all, every professional working in this field defines his own set of tools. Depending on whether he works with photography, collages, layouts for print media or modeling, there are always those products that he considers the most convenient and simple.
For beginning editors, free products can be useful, the image processing technique in which has the most primitive level. And this means that you can understand how they work before moving on to professionals.
Shark graphics prefer powerful paid solutions that require large system resources and investments. But, as a rule, a person with a talent for this work very quickly pays for all his expenses.
In general, digital image processing is a whole art, in which it is extremely important to see the golden mean, be able to pay attention to small details and be creative in realizing a possible idea.