PHOTO AND IMAGE EDITING WITH FREEWARE

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

PHOTOS FROM YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA AND SCANNER

1. Be sure the date and time and the GPS setting, if it has one, are correct on your digital camera.
2. Be sure your digital photos are backed up somewhere other than just in your own home, so in a disaster you don't lose them all.
3. Use whatever procedures work for you; these are my procedures and may give you some ideas

1. Put the card from the camera into a USB card reader on my computer
2. Go through the photos on the card and delete the ones I don't want
3. Download the remaining photos into a folder for the year, a subfolder of "Graphics Originals"
4. Copy those photos to a folder called "Photos by Date" into a subfolder labeled for the year and month, YYYY-MM
5. Use a freeware program to rename these copies by extracting the metadata date and time of the photo and putting it in front of photo name; use date and time as YYYY-MM-DD-HHh-MMm-SSs so they sort chronologically; a free program that does this is NAMEXIF from  http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html
   
6. Add descriptive terms to the photo name after the date and time, but before the camera numbering (like IMG-####) -- I keep the camera photo numbering so I can find the photo in "Graphics Originals", if I ever need to go back to the original

1. Since duplicate photos get indexed more than once, it helps to move duplicates to a folder the program doesn't work on
2. AWESOME DUPLICATE PHOTO FINDER -- http://www.duplicate-finder.com -- is a helpful freeware program to help you find and delete duplicate photos

1. Default opens the first bar icon with the commonly used editing features; other icons in the bar have additional sets of editing features; most features have automatic settings you can try; each item has an "undo" feature so those changes can be removed
2. Fill light -- slider bar lightens or darkens the photo
3. Cropping -- you select the aspect ratio (4x6, 5x7, manual, etc.), it puts a rectangle of that ratio on the photo for you to resize, rotate, or move to where you want to crop the photo; then click Apply 
4. Straighten -- puts a grid on the picture with a slider for you to tilt the photo the way you want
5. Red eye -- corrects the red that comes from flash bouncing off people's retinas when they are looking at the camera
6. Many additional editing features, e.g. Contrast, Retouch, Add/Edit Text, Sharpen, Color Tint, Change to B&W, Change to Sepia, etc.
7. Histogram at bottom left shows how colors enter, if you know how to use it
8. All corrections are only made on links to the photo in PICASA and not on the photo itself, unless you later save it with the changes
9. If a photo is duplicated and you only work on one copy, the other will show as originally, so you can compare them

PHOTO EDITING WITH WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY

1. Has a Make a Copy button (near the left side), if you want to start with a copy or make an edited copy at any time
2. Edits are made through links to the photo in PHOTO GALLERY and are kept track of so you can click on Revert to Original button (top right) to remove all the changes, even months later
3. The Fine Tuning button comes up when you first double-click on a photo -- lists things like Adjust Exposure, Adjust Color, Straighten Photo, and Adjust Detail
4. Straighten puts a grid over photo with a slider for you to tilt it
5. Adjust Exposure shows several sliders to change Brightness, Contrast, Shadows, and Highlights.
6. There is a Histogram showing the colors in the photo and as you edit it; can use it to set the sliders for best results, if you know how to use a histogram
7. Shadows slider makes things in the shadows brighten up
   
8. Exposure slider shows the photo as if it had been taken with different exposures
   
9. Auto Adjust button lets program make the changes it thinks are needed -- Can Revert To Original and start over, if you don't like the Auto changes
10. Crop button allows you to select aspect ratio (4x6, 5x7, or manual, and resize the crop tool rectangle in the ratio
    
11. Red Eye button corrects red in people's eyes from the flash reflecting on their person's retinas
12. Retouch button allows you to remove slight blemishes by placing a small rectangle around the spot and clicking so it looks like the rest of the background nearby
13. Noise Reduction button removes graininess where it can
14. Other buttons change photo to sepia tones, change color to black-and-white, and other effects
15. Double-clicking on the photo or clicking on Close File saves the edits in PHOTO GALLERY for that photo, but can revert back to the original anytime you want, even months later

1. Panorama -- stitches together overlapping photos to make a single one -- good for large group of people where you can't get them all in one photo or for landscape too large for one photo -- stitches horizontally and vertically to make larger picture
2. Fuse -- allows you to replace parts of one photo with parts from other photos taken at same time and place, e.g. can Fuse (replace) a frowning face with the person's smiling face from another photo at same time and place
3. Create Movie -- can use it to create a video of the photos you select and add sound track

PHOTO AND IMAGE EDITING WITH OTHER FREEWARE

1. Good YouTube video on Basics of PAINT -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZoWz_owZX0
   
2. A common graphics need is to place two or more images side-by-side into a single image, e.g. a long newspaper column clipped so the pieces are side-by-side -- Article on doing this with PAINT -- http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/how-to-combine-two-imagespictures-without-photoshop/ -- Can paste images from clipboard into PAINT and move them to be side-by-side
3. Can also use freeware LibreOffice Draw and paste images side-by-side, then save file in odg (Open Document Graphics) format

1. Many helpful FAQ's in the link on the IRFANVIEW website
2. Helpful pdf article at  http://www.ringwoodcc.hampshire.org.uk/Irfanview-2.pdf 
3. Can do many graphics editing things, resizing, batch conversions of types, panoramas, etc. 

1. GIMP = GNU Image Manipulator Program -- OpenSource
2. Very complete graphics editor like PhotoShop, but free -- many uses, but has steep learning curve
3. GIMP tutorials at  http://www.gimpshop.com/tutorials  and Users Manual at  http://docs.gimp.org
   

COMPARISON AND COMMENTS

CONCLUSIONS

CHALLENGE