How to Edit Your Photos in Photoshop

Using Photoshop's "AutoContrast" command performs one type of photo editing.

Photoshop has several tools you can apply to improve the appearance of your photos. These tools include the red eye removal tool and the commands for adjusting contrast and brightness. You can also perform other adjustments, including rotating and cropping pictures. As you use these tools, you may decide to venture into more creative edits to your photo, including those making use of Photoshop's brushes and color palettes. By making your pictures look better, editing with Photoshop improves the appearance of any documents or Web pages containing those pictures.

Instructions

Red Eye

1. Open Photoshop, then click the "File" menu's "Open" command.

2. Navigate to the file of a photo on your PC that you want to edit.

3. Double-click the file to load it into Photoshop.

4. Click the button with the eye icon in the tool palette at screen left. This picks up the red eye removal tool.

5. Drag the mouse over the portion of the image containing the red eye. When you release the mouse, Photoshop will turn the red eyes to a more natural color.

Rotate

1. Open Photoshop, then click the "Open" item from the "File" menu.

2. Double-click a photo file on your hard drive to load it into Photoshop.

3. Click the "Image" menu, then click the "Image rotation" item.

4. Click the "Arbitrary" command, which tells Photoshop you want to type in an angle by which to rotate the image. This command is useful for correcting horizon lines that don't appear completely horizontal.

5. Type the number of degrees you want to rotate the image by, then click "OK" to rotate the image.

Crop

1. Open an image you want to edit in Photoshop.

2. Click the button in the tool palette whose icon is a rectangle with dashed lines. This is the "Marquee" tool, which you use to crop images.

3. Drag a selection region around the area in the photo that you want to keep.

4. Click the "Image" menu heading.

5. Click the "Crop" item. Photoshop will resize the photo's canvas to display just the area you selected in step 2.

Contrast

1. Load a photo you want to edit into Photoshop.

2. Click the "Image" menu heading.

3. Click the "Adjustments" item.

4. Click the "Brightness item." Photoshop will display a small box with sliders that let you adjust the contrast and brightness levels of your photo interactively.

5. Drag the contrast slider left and right, noticing the effect on the photo as you do this.

6. Repeat the previous step for the brightness slider, then click "OK" once the settings are to your satisfaction.

Add Label

1. Load a photo into Photoshop that you'd like to add a label to.

2. Click the command in the tool palette at screen left whose icon shows the letter "T." This is the text tool.

3. Drag a region on your photo where you want to add the label.

4. Type the label's text, for example, "My beach house."

5. Click any other tool in the palette to release the text tool.

References

• Utah Valley University: Basic image editing with Photoshop