Basic Photoediting
Using PhotoPea.com

Color Correction

The "Levels Tool" is quite helpful to improve color tone, as well as improving a dark or light photograph. Poor color tone most often comes from the pigments in the photo paper or the slide film deteriorating over time. It is not unusual to see a greenish, bluish, or reddish color tone appear in an aging photo or slide.

We’ll show how we can use the levels tool to reduce the reddish color cast present in this photo. For many photos, using this tool is all that is needed to improve color tone.

~~ Download Image ~~

Lighting Problems

Before the digital era and improved light metering, photos would occasionally turn out as too dark or too light. Those older photos are then digitized with the lighting issues as they were taken.

We can correct most lighting problems using what is called the “Levels Tool”. This is a tool found in most photoediting programs. The higher end software apps will have a more sophisticated version of this tool, but for general correction of light, the one in PhotoPea.com works pretty well.

There is just one tutorial for the dark image, but the same principles apply to both types of lighting problems. Where there is too much “white” in areas of a photo, there is not much pixel data to work with. Dark photos do tend to be more “editable” in correcting light than overexposed

~~ Download Dark Image ~~

~~ Download Light Image ~~

Straighten / Crop a Photo

Not everyone takes photos with the horizona perfectly horizontal. The “Straighten Tool” can be helpful to quickly rotate the photo so that the horizon is flat.

“Cropping” a photo means that you can cut out parts of the photo that are not wanted. Suppose you have a person(s) off to the right of your central focus person(s). You could crop out those unwanted persons. Of course, realize that the image size, could be reduced some, and you may develop pixelation when the image is zoomed in on.

Removing Small Photo Defects

Reducing Photo File Size

There are times when you need to shrink the size of an image, such as to upload to FamilySearch.

Additional Resources

Detailed Beginner’s Guide to PhotoPea.com

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