Last Chance for Snow Portraits

Exposure and image editing tricks to make the most of the last of winter.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Improving Portraits in the Snow

Winter is almost over. I can tell by the way that my canines (known at this time of year as "dogcicles") tend to defrost faster upon entering the house, leaving a slushy trail in their wake all over the living-room carpet. With spring right around the corner, we're running out of time to take those festive portraits in the snow. So grab your camera and start shooting!

The only problem with this plan is that snow has a tendency to confuse your digital camera's exposure meter, often leaving the subject underexposed. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to "separate" the subject from the snow so you could tweak the foreground without affecting the snow? Well, wouldn't you know it--there is.

Select the Subject

This technique combines a few handy tools you probably already know how to use. Let's start by loading some sort of snowy photo into Jasc Paint Shop Pro. If you want to, you can use my portrait of a duck.

The first task is to duplicate the duck and place the second image into a new layer. To do that, choose Layers, Duplicate from the menu. You should see two layers in the Layers Palette on the right side of the screen, Background and Copy of Background. (If you don't see the Layers Palette, choose View, Palettes, Layers from the menu and it should appear.)

Our next task is to isolate the duck from the background. Given the subject matter, the easiest way to do that is to turn the image into a black-and-white photo so that the duck is black and the snowy background is white. To do that, choose Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Threshold without changing your Layer selection. Adjust the Threshold slider until the duck is mostly black, but the background remains white. I found that a value of about 160 works pretty well, but feel free to experiment. When it looks about right, click OK.

Now select the black duck. I suggest using the Magic Wand tool, which is found in the fifth cubby from the top of the Tools Palette on the left side of the screen. Note that Paint Shop Pro stacks several tools in many of its slots. If the Magic Wand isn't displayed, click the down arrow next to the slot and choose the wand from the list, then click on the black duck.

Transfer the Selection

We're almost done! Next up is where we get really clever. We really aren't interested in the black duck; what we want to do is to "transfer" the selection from the black duck to the color duck hiding underneath, so that the duck in our snowy image is selected. To do that, click on the Background layer in the Layers Palette and then choose Selections, Promote Selection to Layer. Voila! There's a new layer called Promoted Layer in the Layer Palette. To see it, delete the Copy of Background layer (which we no longer need) by clicking it in the Layer Palette and then clicking the Delete Layer button at the top of the palette. (You can also select Layers, Delete from the menu.)

Now we can do anything we like to the duck in our snowy image--lighten it, darken it, color correct it--and only the duck will be affected. As an example, click Enhance Photo, One Step Photo Fix. Cool, huh? You might notice that there's a little bit of snow in your selection--probably in a showy region right under the duck. Not to worry--that won't affect your results very much. But if it bothers you, just be a little more conservative with your threshold controls next time you experiment.

When you're done editing the duck, save your image. When you save it as a JPEG file, Paint Shop Pro automatically "flattens" the image, combining the layers into one.

Dave's Favorites: Easier Photo Sharing With SendPhotos

There's a very good reason that I cover the intricacies of resizing and e-mailing digital images every few months: As new folks subscribe to this newsletter, that's invariably one of the first questions they send me. Perhaps a quarter of all my e-mails ask about this vexing topic.

But why bother resizing your photos for e-mail? SendPhotos, from Novatix, lets you sidestep the whole issue by doing it for you. But instead of requiring recipients to open and manage attachments, SendPhotos cleverly embeds the pictures in the message itself, in an attractive stationary template. It's brilliant!

SendPhotos lets you choose photos from anywhere on your hard disk, then creates an HTML-based message that's compatible with all the common e-mail clients, including Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. After you insert the photos, you can choose the style of stationary, the layout, and the background color, then add captions. You can include any additional text you like. When you're done, the message is sent via your favorite e-mail application.

SendPhotos costs $20, and a free trial is available for download. Visit the Novatix Web site for information or to try the program.

Q&A: Toning Down the Red in Faces

I have a problem: Whenever someone takes a picture of me, my face comes out beet red. Can I correct this afterwards in an image editor?

--Bob Alsgaard, Littleton, Colorado

Yes, Bob, I think I can help you out. If you suspected that the camera was biasing photos toward red, you could change the camera's white balance control from automatic to one of the presets that better matches the environment you're being photographed in. Or every time you download an image from that camera to your PC, you could run Paint Shop Pro 8's One Step Photo Fix (click the Enhance Photo button in the toolbar) to automatically fix the color balance after the fact.

As I say, you could do those things; but since it seems that you get the same result no matter what camera is used, I'll assume it's not simply a matter of badly color balanced photos. So we need to resort to "special effects" to fix your visage. There are two simple approaches.

First, you can manually pull the red out of the image in Paint Shop Pro. Choose Adjust, Color Balance, Red/Green/Blue. In the Red/Green/Blue dialog box, zoom out and pan around the image until you have a good view of your face. Then lower the Red value in very small increments until your face is sufficiently less red.

Second, you could try to desaturate the image a bit. When the intensity of the colors in the image is toned down, your face won't be as red. To try your hand at that, choose Adjust, Hue and Saturation, Hue/Saturation/Lightness, and then lower the Saturation slider (the one on the left) in small increments until the image looks about right. If you drag this slider all the way to the bottom, you'll turn your picture into a black-and-white.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This week's Hot Pic: "Big Sur," by Jim Crissman, Cary, North Carolina

Here's what Jim had to say about this week's picture: "I took this picture with a Kodak DX6340 on the way to Big Sur, just south of Monterey. I was driving to Big Sur to catch the sunset and stopped to take some shots because the scene was simply so amazing. To get this picture, I had to hike down a path off of US1 and stand on a cliff. What strikes me as amazing is that the scene looks like a painting, even in real life. I blew it up to 16 by 20 and it is now part of my wall art."