Make Your Subject Glow
For a slick effect, add a healthy glow to the subject of your next photo.
Feature: Make Your Subject Glow
Someone once told me that I have a "healthy glow" about me. I have no idea what that means. Having spent a number of years studying physics in college, it seems to me that any sort of glowing just isn't good for you.
Whatever reservations I have about glowing, adding a bit of glow to your photos can be a good thing. If you've ever wondered how to infuse an element within your photo with a vibrant glow, you'll want follow along this week, because I'm going to show you how to do it in just a few easy steps.
Find a Good Subject
Start with a picture that has some sort of subject that you can easily isolate from the rest of the scene. Take this bowl of strawberries, for instance. We can use a selection tool to grab the berry that's sitting just right of center. Open the picture in your favorite image editing program (I'll use Corel's Paint Shop Pro) and let's get started.
Make the Selection
Our first goal is to select the target berry. Click the Freehand Selection tool (in the fifth cubby from the top of the toolbar on the left side of the screen) and set it to Smart Edge mode in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen. If Tool Options isn't visible, turn it on by choosing
Carefully select the berry by clicking your way around the fruit a little at a time. If you mess up, right-click anywhere in the picture and start again. When you make your way back to where you started, double-click to close the selection.
It's okay if your selection isn't perfect, because we're about to use a little-known trick to smooth it out. Choose
If you're working on a high-resolution photo, you'll need to experiment with higher values; in a typical 6-megapixel image, for instance, I'd try doubling those numbers.
Now that we've got a nice, smooth selection, click OK, then copy the berry to the clipboard by choosing
Add the Glow
Now we're ready for the glow effect. In the Materials palette (usually found on the right side of the screen), right-click in the color box and set the background color to whatever glow you'd like the berry to have--a light color, like white or yellow, will probably work best. (If you don't see the Materials palette, go to
Now we need to expand the selection a bit so there will be room for the color to glow around the berry. Choose
To see the glow, press
Replace the Berry
To finish our project, we need to put the berry back where it started. Choose
Someone once told me that I have a "healthy glow" about me. I have no idea what that means. Having spent a number of years studying physics in college, it seems to me that any sort of glowing just isn't good for you.
Whatever reservations I have about glowing, adding a bit of glow to your photos can be a good thing. If you've ever wondered how to infuse an element within your photo with a vibrant glow, you'll want follow along this week, because I'm going to show you how to do it in just a few easy steps.
Start with a picture that has some sort of subject that you can easily isolate from the rest of the scene. Take this bowl of strawberries, for instance. We can use a selection tool to grab the berry that's sitting just right of center. Open the picture in your favorite image editing program (I'll use Corel's Paint Shop Pro) and let's get started.
Our first goal is to select the target berry. Click the Freehand Selection tool (in the fifth cubby from the top of the toolbar on the left side of the screen) and set it to Smart Edge mode in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen. If Tool Options isn't visible, turn it on by choosing
Carefully select the berry by clicking your way around the fruit a little at a time. If you mess up, right-click anywhere in the picture and start again. When you make your way back to where you started, double-click to close the selection.
It's okay if your selection isn't perfect, because we're about to use a little-known trick to smooth it out. Choose
If you're working on a high-resolution photo, you'll need to experiment with higher values; in a typical 6-megapixel image, for instance, I'd try doubling those numbers.
Now that we've got a nice, smooth selection, click OK, then copy the berry to the clipboard by choosing
Now we're ready for the glow effect. In the Materials palette (usually found on the right side of the screen), right-click in the color box and set the background color to whatever glow you'd like the berry to have--a light color, like white or yellow, will probably work best. (If you don't see the Materials palette, go to
Now we need to expand the selection a bit so there will be room for the color to glow around the berry. Choose
To see the glow, press
To finish our project, we need to put the berry back where it started. Choose
Dave's Favorites: NASA Photo Highlights
As I wrote this, the space shuttle Discovery was zooming over my head once every hour and a half or so--and astronauts were performing a historic repair mission on the underside of the craft to make sure it was safe to return to earth.
That's pretty cool stuff, especially for a space fanatic like me, so I went looking for some new space photography resources online. Along the way, I discovered NASA's multimedia site, which has an Image of the Day as well as a slew of other photos, videos, and text about the space program.
When I first encountered the site, it featured a stunning close-up of astronaut Stephen K. Robinson's shadow on the shuttle's sun-drenched belly. The astronauts are home now, though, and you'll see a different image when you visit. If you're a fan of space stuff like me, you'll want to bookmark the site and check in occasionally for the latest photos from orbit.
Q&A: Should I Scan Black-and-Whites in TIFF?
I've been scanning many old photos. Initially, I was saving all my scanned photos as JPEGs, but I recently I read that black-and-white photos should not be saved in JPEG because of quality issues. So I started using TIFF instead. Now I find that these pictures are very large. Can you tell me the best way to scan my photos?
I get variations on this question every single week, which either means this is a really confusing topic or lots of new subscribers discover this newsletter every month. I suspect it's a little of both.
Here's the skinny: If you want great image quality and a reasonably small file size, save scanned photos in JPEG, but be sure to crank up the JPEG quality to maximum in the scanner software. If you want better than great quality--essentially flawless photos with absolutely no degradation--then save your pictures as TIFF. But the resulting files will be huge.
JPEG lets you control the trade-off between file size and image quality. The more you compress a file, the smaller it will be--but the more color information in the picture will be compromised. Most of the time, you can't tell if a JPEG has been compressed a little unless you zoom way in on the details. If you compress the picture a lot, the visual discrepancies are more obvious.
And by the way, Terry: It doesn't matter much whether you're scanning color or blank-and-white images. Your decision to use JPEG or TIFF is essentially the same in both cases.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
Kim writes: "I took this photo around midnight. It was the last picture I took during a spring evening, wandering around the south end of the Strip. I love the cartoonish colors in the photo--especially the emerald green on the right of the MGM Grand. The streetlight becomes a bright star in the sky (that's natural--no star filter), and the streaks of vehicle lights convey the motion I felt as they zoomed past me.
"I took the picture with a Nikon D70 using a 15-second exposure. I released the shutter using a wireless Nikon remote control. I adjusted the tripod so I could sit on the pavement and look through the viewfinder to compose the photo. I drew a number of looks from passersby, no doubt wondering what I was doing sitting on the sidewalk at midnight. But what the heck? It's Vegas!
"Afterwards, I finished the picture using three adjustment layers in Paint Shop Pro 9. I used the Channel Mixer to intensify the colors, Brightness/Contrast to increase the light on the buildings and to improve overall contrast, and a Soft Light layer to burn some of the brighter spots."
Dave Johnson
