Image Editing

Image Editing (Special Interest Group)

Photo Editing
"when you alter an image file in any way after it has come from your camera that either represents what you actually saw in the scene being photographed, or to achieve a final image that represents your own artistic intentions."

Why Photo Edit? - to achieve a final image that either represents what you actually saw in the scene being photographed, or to achieve a final image that represents your own artistic intentions. There are many reasons to edit your images – from simply adding contrast to a flat RAW file, cropping, removing noise, adding sharpness, or changing file size for printing; to removing unwanted elements of an image, adding special effects, or creating a composite of multiple images to get a desired effect.

This special interest group, hosted by Gary Ford, will provide a venue for members to come together to share and build their image editing skills. Meetings will be conducted digitally via Zoom. To participate you will need a computer with a microphone and camera, or a smart tablet. You must pre-register to receive the link to the Zoom meetings.

The meeting is open to Beginners as well as Intermediate and Advanced photo editors. The host will make his best efforts to help Beginners learn the basics so they can join in the three components of each meeting; and he will challenge those with intermediate and advanced skills to enhance their own knowledge and share what they know with others.

The meetings will have three components:

Sharing of images in a My Picture, Your Edit exercise – a selection of six RAW images will be collected from the members of our group and circulated to all group members who will be invited to edit two to six images in whatever way they think will enhance the image – either with the intention of being true to the original photographer’s vision when taking the image, or to be as creative as possible to arrive at a sample of photo art. The image4s will be shown and the editor will describe what he or she did to get the final result.
Sharing of Before/After images – group members will be invited to submit up to two original images that they have edited along with the edited version. We will view these images and discuss what the editor did to achieve the final result.
Brief Demonstrations – the host and other group members with skills will demonstrate how to use editing software such as Camera RAW and Photoshop, Lightroom, Topaz Studio 2, and Luminar AI.

Video with overview of SIG: click here (members only)

For recordings of 2020-21 meetings: click here (members only)

Meetings: Sept 2021 to June 2022

We will meet the last Wednesday of each month at 7:00 p.m. MT. Meetings will last approximately 75-90 minutes.

August 25, 2021: recording (members only)
July 28, 2021: recording (members only)
September 29, 2021 - Basic Concepts – why edit your images, editing of JPGs vs RAW files, a quick look at the interface of each of the editing programs.
- recording (members only)
October 27, 2021 – Basic Workflow – temperature adjustments, recovering details in the highlights and shadows, setting white and black points, cropping images, correcting horizon line issues, saturation adjustments.
- recording (members only)
November 24, 2021 – Removing unwanted elements, patching image blemishes, adding contrast to an image, setting image size, noise reduction, sharpening, and printing.
December 29, 2021 – Possible Special Demo event
January 26, 2021 – Local adjustments, selection tools, layer masking, adjustment layers
February 23, 2022 – Conversion to Black and White, pre-sets, filters, special and artistic effects.
March 30, 2022 – Composite images, sky replacement, content aware fill.
April 27, 2022 – Colour management
May 25, 2022 – Profiles

There may be additional meetings June through August if some of the group members wish to meet.

To sign up for this SIG, click here.