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Photo-editing—local Editing...
Local editing lets you change selected areas of the image. The latest programs
such as Aperture and Lightroom focus on global changes so to make most
local changes you have to export a photo to Photoshop or similar program.
When you export an image you can specify what format it will be in. For
example, when exporting an image to Photoshop, you would probably export
it in Photoshop’s native format, PSD. It is then this PSD file that you edit and
when finished, reimport into Lightroom.
When using a program such as Photoshop here are some of the things you
can do to an image that you can’t do in Aperture or Lightroom.- Selecting. If you first select an area of the image, you can edit just that area
without affecting other areas. You can also copy, move, or delete selected
areas, perhaps to create a collage or remove a background. - Compositing. You can cut out a selected part of one photo and paste it
into another to create a composite image. - Healing and cloning. Many images have small imperfections such as a
small blemish on a portrait, reflections, or even telephone wires you want to
remove. Small areas may benefit by being made a little lighter or darker than
their surroundings. Portrait subjects may have red-eye caused by flash in a
dark room. The Healing Brush works by blending the area you sample seam-
lessly into the background so the texture, lighting, transparency, and shad-
ing aren’t changed. You can either paint with pixels sampled from the image
or select a pattern to paint with. In Lightroom the Remove Spots tool lets
you repair a selected area of a photo with a sample from another area. Clone
copies the sampled area of the photo to the selected area. Heal copies just the
texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled area to the selected area. - Dodging and burning to lighten or darken areas of a print have been
the most popular darkroom techniques since the first prints were made from
negatives. Dodging was done using a piece of cardboard or other tool to block
light from certain areas of the image to make them lighter. Burning was done
with a piece of cardboard with a hole cut in it that let light through to darken
selected areas. In Photoshop you do the same thing by dragging a brush over
the area of the image you want to adjust. - Adding text to images is usually the realm of graphic designers, more so
than photographers. However, you should be able to so to create title slides
for your slide shows, add copyright notices to your images, or just invent
ways to combine text and images in creative ways. - Layers. When you first open a digital photo, it has only one layer—the
background layer containing the image. Any changes you make to this layer
become part of the image and permanently change its pixels. To avoid per-
manent changes, you add additional layers and make your changes on those
layers. It’s as if you were covering an original photo with sheets of glass on
which you drew, painted, made adjustments to the image below, entered text,
or added fills. - Blending modes determine how a color you apply with a tool interacts
with the colors you paint over or how the colors on one layer interact with
colors on the layers below. - Transformations let you scale, rotate, skew, distort and add perspective
to selections.
Photoshop’s toolbox
contains many of the
tools used to make
local adjustments.
These include healing,
dodging, burning,
cloning, and painting
tools.
Click for a movie on
changing perspective in
a photo.
The red eye and remove
spots tools are the only
local editing tools in
Lightroom. All other
tools are for global
editing.