Image Editing

With treatment photos, or any large collection of photos, the less editing you have to do, the better.  Editing takes time and if you choose to save your originals (as recommended), you’ll end up with multiple versions of the same image that you’ll then have to store and manage. 

There are ethical implications of editing treatment photos as well. You should strive to shoot the very best photos that you can, and do a minimal amount of editing except when absolutely necessary. If you find that you are having to do a lot of editing, consider reshooting your photos (if possible) to fix the problems - especially if they are color or light related. There is nothing you can do to fix a "blown out" picture, where your whitest pixels are actually devoid of any information and will not respond to brightness or contrast adjustments. Reshooting such "blown out" photos is the only way to fix them - and make sure you white balance correctly next time!

That said, there are a number of program options for image editing.  Programs such as Apple's Preview, iPhoto, or the proprietary software associated with the camera, among others, can be used for basic image editing. For additional and more complicated image editing options, such as adding text and automatic straightening, Photoshop and the free, open-source program, the Gimp, are where to turn.  Many conservation students have had success using Photoshop Elements, a slightly less complex but still effective version of Adobe Photoshop.  Please see the graphics tutorials for introductions to these programs – having even a basic understanding of Photoshop (or your graphics editor of choice) will save you time and frustration when you need to edit your photos.
       

Before doing anything to your photos, however, please read about image resizing.  Once you have made hard copies of your original images, and you’ve properly resized your working files, I’ll show you some basic editing tips and tricks. 

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