Photoshop Elements: enhance holiday photos

Most cameras do a good job of capturing images as you saw them, but there are times when you'll want to enhance your photos to make them even better. 

Without looking at Element’s handy Layers option just yet, for the novice there are several simple enhancements that can be applied to most holiday snaps.

For this tutorial we're using Photoshop Elements 6, but the steps can be employed using earlier versions.

1 Duplicate

Select the chosen image from the Organiser workspace and select File > Duplicate (Ctrl+Shift+D). This safeguards the original and you can save it in the same folder without overwriting it. Close the original to prevent any mistakes.

2 Straighten

Although it was barely noticeable at the time of taking, our image wasn't quite level. From the Full Edit panel choose Image > Rotate > Straighten Image. Oddly this option is fully automatic. 

For greater control, you could instead use the Guided Edit panel or type P from the Full Edit palette and click and drag the cursor along the horizon. Then release the mouse button to allow Elements to level the image.

You'll want to straighten before cropping otherwise you'll have to crop the image slightly a second time. That is unless you have selected Crop to Remove Background beforehand from the pull-down panel in the Toolbar (shown) in the Full Edit palette.

3 Crop

Our shot of the beach has some interesting foreground detail but with several distracting elements close to the edge the composition would benefit from being tighter. Make you selection from the Full Edit or Guided Edit panel if you prefer.

4 Remove

Even though we've removed some of the distractions from the edge, there’s a red box and white towel in our shot that we could remove, if we wanted to. This tidying up can be controversial and may breach the rules for a photo-competition say but it’s a useful skill to develop for printing photos at home or sharing online, perhaps.

From the Full Edit panel type J to reveal the Spot Healing brush. Hold Shift + J to cycle between that and the Healing Brush, if that is displayed instead. Use a brush size that’s slightly larger than the object to be removed. Centre and left click the mouse button to remove it.

If that doesn't work as well as you expected you could try, if you prefer, the Clone Stamp Tool. Type S, then right click to choose your brush size, or select directly from the toolbar. Like the Healing brush, hold Shift + S to toggle between the Clone and Pattern Stamp if the wrong tool is chosen inadvertently.

Type Z for the Zoom tool and click on the region of interest. To move around the image type H for the Hand tool, and click the left mouse button and drag the image to suit. Type S to return to the Clone Stamp and click. Alt-click to load a target to clone and click and drag to remove the blemish. Use Ctrl+Z to undo the last action.

5 Brightness & contrast

Rather than using the auto fix option for improving contrast we're going to correct the brightness and contrast with Levels. From the Quick Edit or Full Edit mode choose Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels (Ctrl+L). We prefer the Full Edit mode as it allows access to the Info panel, Window > Info. Now select the Black Eyedropper to locate the darkest point in the image.

Double check using the Info Panel – you're looking for similarly low numbers for each RGB channel detailed on the left of Info panel. Click the image to set the Black Point. Now repeat using the white eyedropper while looking for the lightest point in the image (closest to 255) to find the white point. 

We used the white surf in this shot. Now use the Grey Eyedropper to remove any colour cast by selecting a neutral looking grey area, the wet sand closest to the surf proved ideal.

Although the image is an improvement it still looks a little flat. We moved the black slider to the right, just to the beginning of the rise in the histogram and moved the white slider similarly to the left. The grey triangle we dragged to the left slightly to lighten the mid-tones. 

Click OK to apply the corrections, and click X to close the Info panel.

6 Sharpen

From the Full Edit or Quick Edit mode, select Enhance > Unsharp Mask. Make sure the preview option is checked and set at 100%. Click and drag the magnified image to check an area you want in sharp focus. Then choose Amount (from 1 to 500%), and select a value of around 100% to start with. 

Now select Radius (from 0.1 to 250 pixels) and from your 300 ppi image (see earlier tutorial for resizing images) and choose a value of around 2.0 pixels. Unless the image is very grainy looking you may want to leave the Threshold setting (available from 0 to 250) at 0. After checking the effects, click OK, and then choose File > Save (Ctrl+S). 

Under Image options we would suggest when saving JPEG images to set the Quality to at least 10 using the slider, when done select OK.

Find Which? Best Buy compact digital cameras and read digital SLR camera reviews.