Bitmap Doctoring
Sometimes in your raw image sorting one or two pictures are very close to perfect. If there is time in your tasking calendar, it might be worthwhile to bring the skill set another microstock benefit. Knowing what images can be tweaked a little to get a uniform background, evened out shadow, clearer foreground or improved resolution can pay off if the dynamics elsewhere in the image are potentially profitable.
If you have some time available and some willingness to learn, some integral interface techniques could save that small percentage of photos that come really, really close to maximum value. Make no mistake, all photos can’t be fixed. But after some time grabbing images you’ll start to know just how close some image files are to very marketable pictures.
Picture taking is hard work. Travel, energy, cameras, and the opportunity to get to a location or arrest a special image consumes resources. One or two pictures per photo grab might merit a little fixing up. If there is a goal in mind for a certain photo, like a Christmas card, a gift framed print, or a publicity function, work with the bitmap level tools to create a ultimate photo that can be admired and/or sold online.
In the deluxe suites for photo editing the programmed scripts might execute this step for you at the touch of a button. But with a little experience you can doctor the unwanted elements out of some of your images and have them ready for submission, publishing, or framing with that little extra something bringing the quality up at the endpoint photo save sharply.
Trapping color of the exact shade inside the transplanted image area and substituting the background and surrounding pixel areas with a bitmap conformative to a real picture is tricky. Don’t try it until you have at least one clean copy of the image you are working with tucked away. Review section by section and aim to improve the overall image quality with little changes, not massive, time-consuming repairs.
Once this bitmap editing becomes comfortable, shots with flaws like power lines, shadows, or small out of focus patches can be cleaned up without having to filter the definition and virtuosity out of the image. Resolution loss can be minimized using filters and editing effects. Once the photographer becomes a competent bitmap editor, the balance of “foggy” patches and irresolute areas inside an otherwise marketable image can be improved.
If you want an example of how bitmap editing can improve a photo, consider the above 3 wolf image. This is actually a t-shirt picture I cropped to capture and convey the graphic. I brought up the colors of each individual wolf using a brown, silver blue, and bright aquamarine hue depending on the color family of each wolf. The decayed image quality from multiple generations of copying and pasting was evident in the faded grayscale of the bitmap level pixels.
Dots of one color applied one by one in the brightest part of the “fur” brought an immediately more resolute effect at normal zoom. I further brought up the color by fitting a border of light blue around the graphic to punch up the blackness. Bordering also kills the “shock” of inset pictures against flat white. Inset pictures against black, by contrast, always look fabulous because their color puts them in relief.
