Special Effects for Digital Photography

Special effects for digital photography range from removing red-eye to adding and removing images in the picture file. While some digital effects can be produced with a digital cameras, most special effects for digital photography are added with software editing tools.

Special Effects: Black and White and Sepia Toning
Most digital cameras include settings for black and white and sepia tones. However, these settings are not always of the best quality. You can often create better images when you take the shot in color and then use a digital software editor to alter the image’s colors.

Removing the Unwanted

Digital special effects allow you to remove unwanted objects from images. If an unsightly fence or dead tree interferes with the composition of a photo, software editing programs can remove it from the image. Removing an item against a mono-colored background is one of the easiest digital special effects you can perform: After sampling the background color, you can simply spray paint over the offending object.

Removing images becomes trickier if they obscure objects behind them. At this point, digital special effects take on an artistry all their own. You have two different options available to remove images that have objects behind them: You can superimpose a picture of the obscured object over the unwanted object or, for small areas, you can alter the image pixel by pixel. The second option takes a deft hand and significantly more time.

Red Eye and Closed Eyes
For many amateur photographers, red eye removal is the most important of all digital special effects. Even though most digital cameras have red-eye reduction features, red eye remains the bane of many photos.

Red-eye reduction special effects are standard tools for almost all software editing programs. Essentially, red-eye reduction allows you to insert more natural colors in place of glowing red eyes.

Closed eyes are also a common problem in photos. You can fix them by cropping a person’s eyes from one picture and superimposing them over the closed eyes.

Changing Backgrounds with Special Effects
You can use digital special effects to remove a picture’s background and replace it with another. To do this, the subject in the foreground should have strong, clear lines. You can then clean up the cropped subject’s lines (often pixel by pixel) and then superimpose it on the replacement background.

As with many digital effects, the basics of replacing a background are easy to develop but difficult to master. A well-executed digital special effect is difficult to distinguish from an unmanipulated photo.

Restoring Photos with Digital Special Effects
Digitally restoring aged or damaged photos requires specialized knowledge of special effects. A skilled restorer can digitally fill in holes and tears and can compensate for fading in the original photo while retaining the integrity of the original piece.

Achieving Filtered Digital Special Effects
Traditional cameras achieved filtered special effects by using special lenses, such as fisheye lenses. Today, high-end digital cameras may include settings that duplicate these special effects. However, it’s far more likely for photographers to add these digital special effects during image editing.

Taken from http://www.photography.com/topics/special-effects-for-digital-photography/