Digital Imaging Manipulation
The Digital Darkroom
Digital imaging allows you to make changes to enhance and improve your photos. These can be as simple or as complex as you want, from minor adjustments to an array of effects more suitable to the enthusiast.
You can fine tune aspects such as contrast, colour depth and sharpness, as well as crop unwanted parts from the image. Filters, special visual effects and the like, enable you to turn what may start out as a fairly ordinary picture into something extraordinary.
You can use simple software to make a few corrections to your pictures, or use top level image-enhancement software to manipulate the image, make panoramas, montages and much more.
The degree which you can edit or modify the digital photograph depends on the amount of information the camera has captured. In other words, the image’s initial resolution.
First of all, be sure you have a backup. Before you turn your artistic hand to making changes, ensure that you copy or ‘burn’ your original images on to CD or DVD. These can then be filed for safekeeping as digital negatives. CDs and DVDs that have a gold reflective layer are the best for long-term security of image data. If you go too far or don’t like the changes, then an Undo button or Revert option will put the picture back the way it was. You will also be asked to ‘Save the Changes?’ before you exit, as a further safeguard? | 
