Micro Polishing Tips
You know you are really in the photography biz when you just don’t find the released image acceptable and start improving it willy nilly after seeing it. The  difference between the amateur and the professional is the independent consistency in the quality of the photographic work product whether a live client in waiting in the wings or not. If you learn to exercise your skills without a client your talent will grow without waiting for a learning curve.
You know you can improve on it, and you can’t wait to get your mouse on it. These types of photo projects make outstanding before and after items in your portfolio. The improved visual appeal has a strong selling value. Clients with a roster of unfinished raw image files may be looking for your talent online. There are a few simple tricks to use when you are reviewing an image to make sure the utmost quality appears in every submission.
One of the things I like to do before considering an image really finished is to check at the 800 per cent magnification level for stretched tones in the bitmap. For images of people look at eye lines, chin line, jaw lines and shadows. The kind of tone you may need for lips and eye shadows may be a combination of shadow tone, skin tone, and blush or makeup tone.
Secondary tones are what many photographers knows are around the bend when they look at raw photo files. That’s why proof sheets and white boxes are used to examine composition, color, resolution and framing potential before ordering the retouching or photo editing necesary for publication.
There are a lot of sloppy leftovers at this level from careless retouching at upward levels of magnification. Sometimes a tone or two can be lightened or deepended for a “retouching”. The line tool might have missed certain endpoints and the handles might have recolored other parts of the image. Yes, the maximum bitmap resolution is very time consuming and painstaking to work on. But why reproduce work at every stage of the image improvement project?Â
If you have manipulated the image in the dimension or stretched or angled anything, the bitmap appearance will show consecutive bitmap tones like squares or stripes of the same color. Indenting a patterned background or even vague pointillist color bits will clean up a unfocused or blurred background. If you review at 100% magnification after a patch of work you will see the results are a clarifying effect on the overall visual presentation.
For the above image I noticed color degradation and hue decay upon every save. While this isn’t supposed to happen, many second and third generation saves image files will suffer this color decay. I dotted back tones in the bitmap to make the resolution appear complete. I had to copy and reverse a lot of the background to get the whirling effect of smoke to an acceptable level, covering up some weird yellow advertising icon.
 I brought up the lights in the eyes of the main character, which are a feature of his during the first film. I lined the image with a complimentary color, since I know the image will be mounted on a flat white website space. And I filled in the text with a lighter hue shade to pick up the contrast, as the text style chosen was too faint fotr the image. Now it’s ready to accompany a blog entry at twifanatics.com and look like custom artwork.
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