The credits for this article is not to me but to the link that I provide at the bottom. I am doing this for my own research only.
10 Ways to Improve Photo:
- Straighten the Horizon
A slanted horizon can be distracting; straighten it to draw attention back to the important parts of the photo.
- Crop to Improve Composition
Crop in tight on your subject.
- Blur to Focus Attention
Blurring the photo's background cuts down on distracting clutter. Use a digital blur to lessen the impact of these unimportant features,
leaving the main subject in sharp focus. A Gaussian blur usually gives the most natural look.
- Remove Red-eye
Simply zoom in on the offending area and colour over the red pixels with black or dark grey.
- Use Clone Tool to remove Unwanted Objects
The clone tool allows you to remove distracting, unwanted objects from your scene
- Warm Up or Cool Down Your Scene With Digital Filters
Using your camera's built-in white balance settings can help, but often
we can still be left with a photo whose colours don't appear anything
like the way we perceived them at the time. A good example is a photo
taken inside which comes out with an orange tint, or an outdoor photo
with a blue tint (this effect is caused by something known as colour temperature).
We can correct for this tint by using digital filters to apply either a
blue (cooling) or an orange (warming) filter to counteract the color
tint in our scene.
- Adjust Brightness, Contrast, Levels, and Curves
Brightness and contrast are fairly self explanatory - use brightness to
lighten or darken an under- or over-exposed photo, and use contrast to
adjust the difference in brightness between the lightest and darkest
pixels.
The levels and curves tools essentially do the same thing, but they
offer much more control over the output.
- Remove Digital Noise
Noise is the digital equivalent of film grain. It especially affects
photos taken with a long exposure time and those with a high ISO setting
(digital equivalent of film speed). Night photos are one type of shot
greatly affected by digital noise because they often use one or both of
the above conditions.
There are several programs available to remove noise, and one of the best is Neat Image,
which is available as a Photoshop plugin or a standalone program.
Simply load an image and let the program work its magic, and it will be
left with a smoother and more pleasing image.
- Sharpen Your Photo
Sharpening is a technique often used in print media because it can make
a photo appear crisper and better focused. The best tool for sharpening an image is called the Unsharp Mask, or USM (Note: the word "unsharp"
refers to the technique it uses to sharpen an image, it will in fact
make it more sharp).
When applying the Unsharp Mask, experiment with the settings until it is
get an effect which looks sharper but still natural - when in doubt, use
less sharpening rather than more.
- Add a Border to the Image
A plain black or white border around an image can really help to enhance
the photo's impact, and give it a more professional look. Avoid
patterned or overly complicated borders at all costs; they just look
tacky.
Source is here
10 Top Photography Composition Rules :
- Rule of Thirds
Imagine that the image is divided into 9 equal segments by 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines. The rule of thirds
says that you should position the most important elements in your scene
along these lines, or at the points where they intersect.
- Balancing Elements
Placing your main subject off-centre, as with the rule of thirds,
creates a more interesting photo, but it can leave a void in the scene
which can make it feel empty. You should balance the "weight" of your
subject by including another object of lesser importance to fill the
space.
- Leading Lines
When we look at a photo our eye is naturally drawn along lines. By
thinking about how you place lines in your composition, you can affect
the way we view the image, pulling us into the picture, towards the
subject, or on a journey "through" the scene. There are many different
types of line - straight, diagonal, curvy, zigzag, radial etc - and each
can be used to enhance our photo's composition.
- Symmetry and Patterns
We are surrounded by symmetry and patterns, both natural and man-made.,
They can make for very eye-catching compositions, particularly in
situations where they are not expected. Another great way to use them is
to break the symmetry or pattern in some way, introducing tension and a
focal point to the scene.
- Viewpoint
Before photographing your subject, take time to think about where you
will shoot it from. Our viewpoint has a massive impact on the
composition of our photo, and as a result it can greatly affect the
message that the shot conveys. Rather than just shooting from eye level,
consider photographing from high above, down at ground level, from the
side, from the back, from a long way away, from very close up, and so
on.
- Background
How many times have you taken what you thought would be a great shot,
only to find that the final image lacks impact because the subject
blends into a busy background? The human eye is excellent at
distinguishing between different elements in a scene, whereas a camera
has a tendency to flatten the foreground and background, and this can
often ruin an otherwise great photo. Thankfully this problem is usually
easy to overcome at the time of shooting - look around for a plain and
unobtrusive background and compose your shot so that it doesn't distract
or detract from the subject.
- Depth
Because photography is a two-dimensional medium, we have to choose our
composition carefully to conveys the sense of depth that was present in
the actual scene. You can create depth in a photo by including objects
in the foreground, middle ground and background. Another useful
composition technique is overlapping, where you deliberately partially
obscure one object with another. The human eye naturally recognises
these layers and mentally separates them out, creating an image with
more depth.
- Framing
The world is full of objects which make perfect natural frames, such as
trees, archways and holes. By placing these around the edge of the
composition you help to isolate the main subject from the outside world.
The result is a more focused image which draws your eye naturally to
the main point of interest.
- Cropping
Often a photo will lack impact because the main subject is so small it
becomes lost among the clutter of its surroundings. By cropping tight
around the subject you eliminate the background "noise", ensuring the
subject gets the viewer's undivided attention.
- Experimentation
With the dawn of the digital age in photography we no longer have to
worry about film processing costs or running out of shots. As a result,
experimenting with our photos' composition has become a real
possibility; we can fire off tons of shots and delete the unwanted ones
later at absolutely no extra cost. Take advantage of this fact and
experiment with your composition - you never know whether an idea will
work until you try it.
To share the joy :)
