Personal Use

As digital cameras are becoming popular so are photo editing programs. Programs like FotoFinish advertises on their website “get the most out of your digital camera”: meaning learn how to digitally manipulate digital photos. Their website offers instructions on adjusting color, removing red eye, collaging photos and adding specialized frames or borders.

Taking red eye out of a subject’s face, restoring the brightness and contrast to a bland image and cropping someone out of a photo are all simple adjustments (some being completed with the click of a button), but manipulation to the photograph none the less. Because digital editing is becoming faster and easier, these edits will continue to happen more often and soon become habit.

For those that do not want to own their own program they can pay various companies to digitally manipulate or enhance photos for the low cost of $19.99. Companies’ packages and prices range depending on what adjustment is needed. Their edits are seamless and undetectable. However, even with such great quality, it seems that their prices are a little ridiculous when a whole program can be bought for the same amount of money as one photograph manipulation.
There are sites that do have free photo editing like freephotoediting.com or creatingonline; however, their quality may not be of utmost perfection. Below are examples of before and after pictures in three different types of manipulations offered: restoration, coloration and manipulation

Before Restoration	After Restoration
Before Coloration	After Coloration
Before Manipulation	After Manipulation
Images Courtesy of www.fotofinish.com

There was one instances where manipulation was the only way my family was going to have a Christmas card picture. My family made a special day to go out and take a family photograph. We took three or four just in case something happened. And as right as rain, there was not one picture that was decent to send out to family. Two of the best photographs either had my little sister with her eyes closed or my mother with her hand in front of her face.

Hence, I took the skills I had learned in class and put my version of Photoshop to work. I took the head of my sister smiling with her eyes open and pasted it (with a little finessing) to the photo with her eyes closed.

Doesn’t look bad, eh? It is circumstances like this the people use photo manipulation for personal and recreational uses.