How to Use Photoshop to Optimize Photographs of Art – Part 1

In the previous posts, we have been explaining how to photograph your art properly for display on the internet and some good settings to use for your camera.

If you missed these articles, then you may find them at the end of this post. Now, to continue with our photography tutorial with the net stage, image manipulation.

Fixing Artwork Images with Photoshop Tutorial

After you have finished photographing the images of your artwork, remove the SD card from your camera. Digital SLR cameras often come with a USB cord, but I find it is much faster to just plug the USB card into your computer, and transfer your artwork photographs from there.

Create a new folder, and label it “Original Artwork Photos 1”, or something similar. The number is to differentiate the folder from others that we will be creating later.

Make sure it is in an easy to find place, such as in your pictures folder. Transfer all your digital photographs to this folder. The photographs in this folder are your originals, so make sure to never save over them. You may want to consider backing them up onto an external harddrive or DVDR.

Using Photoshop to Fix an Image

Now that you have all your artworks on your computer, it is time to look at them in a photo editing program. Photoshop is the popular choice for this, but any program that has features to crop, rotate, resize, and manipulate the colors, tones, and contrasts, will do. We will be referring to Photoshop CS5, go to for this tutorial.

Download Photoshop CS5 free version by clicking the link.

After you have finished downloading, and installing, open up Photoshop, and go to “File”, then “Open”.

Find the image folder on your computer that you created earlier. Pick an artwork image that you want to manipulate, and click on it.

This is the image of my painting here that I will be using for this tutorial.

First you should take a look at it to make sure it is properly focused.

Go to “view” and “actual pixels” and the screen will zoom in, and show what your image actually looks like close up. If you see that your photo is only slightly out of focus, do not worry. It still may be ok for the web, since this is usually not noticeable after the image size is decreased.

Making Adjustments to Your Image in Photoshop

Go to “Image” and click “adjustments” in Photoshop.

There are several options here that you may use, but just using the “Brightness/Contrast” may bring you satisfactory results. Click on this, and adjust the slider up or down for each option. Notice how the change is shown in the image preview?

In my painting, there were only slight adjustments that had to be made. When you are completely satisfied, click on “OK”. Adjust your image with the other options here if it is needed, and go through the same process.

Remember, any change that is made can be reverted by going to “Edit”, then “Undo” or “Step Backward”, so you never have to worry about ruining your original photograph.