Did you ever have a photo that you just loved because of what it meant to you or how  important the setting was?  And how upset were you that it just didn't look very good and you wish you had a magic wand to fix it?  Well.....with computers you can create editing magic with bad photos.  I don't want you to get the wrong idea and think you can overcome any situation, but there is magic to be found in photo editing.

I'm going to use a bad photo of mine that we really loved.  I'll present two ways to make this a good photo.  The first method depends on you having a decent copy of the main subject of your bad photo.  I'll give you the bad photo of mine for you to play with, and the good copy of my subject.  Now when you've mastered the techniques, fix your own bad photo and let us see how you've improved it.

Just click on the two images to download the full size photos.  The first image is one we really wanted to capture.  This cute little stray cat was coming to our door and begging for food everyday.  Because we were shooting from the dark house towards the bright sunlight, we lost all detail of our main subject.  When we went outside, we were able to get a good picture of her, but not where we wanted her.  So what to do.

First......take a good look at the photo.  Do we really need everything in the photo?  No.  I don't need to see the bottom's of those cars in the background.  I also don't need to see part of our bench on the left side.  So the first thing I'm going to do is to crop out those areas.

Now that I have the exact image I want, I'm ready to start editing.  The cat is the most important part of this image, so I'll start with her.  Now remember, this is the first method that uses a good image of the main subject.  I'm going to use the freehand select tool to carefully draw around the head and white fur of the little kitty in the good photo.  I'm not going to be able to include the whiskers.

With the head and chest selected, I'm going to copy that selection and paste it as a new selection on the bad photo to see how well it's comparing in size.

Well.....I can tell it's a bit too big.  I copy and paste the selection as a new image.  I then try resizing it smaller, about 20 or 25 pixels smaller.  Pasting it again, I find I have it just about exactly the same size, so I now cut and paste that as a new layer.

I notice that the piece does not line up on the same angle, so I rotate that layer 10 degrees to the right.  If I would have left All Layers checked, my whole image would be rotated.  I'd also like to add another note here.  Usually you always sharpen after rotating an image.  A lot of the time, I do not sharpen after rotating if I'm editing in a piece from another photo.  That little bit of softness helps to blend the new piece in better.  This won't always hold true, so use the sharpen as called for depending on what you are working on.

Ok, I have it rotated and in position now.  There was a good reason I cut and pasted that selection as a layer.  Notice how the fur is extending over the door's bar?  In order to keep the kitty looking like she is on the other side of the door, I need to remove that part of the fur.  I adjust the opacity of the fur layer to about 50% and use the freehand selection tool to select the fur that covers the bar.  Then I delete it.

Well.....I'm left with a lot of jagged looking pieces where the two layers meet.  At this point I go ahead and merge the layers.  Then I use the soften option on the Retouch Tool.  I work with a brush size of between 5 and 10 pixels, and the opacity somewhere between 50% and 70%.  The size and opacity depends on the area I am working on.  As you can see in the 3 images below, I actually am starting to have a pretty good looking little kitty.