FIGURE 10-9 Rotating 5 degrees to the left and cropping corrects the problem. Creating a Mirror Image of Your Photo This feature is particularly useful when you’re importing cutout images into another photo (I tell you how to do this later, in the “Making a Cutout” section). Sometimes you need a subject to be facing left, when he or she is facing right in the original photo; or you might want to copy an image upside down to create a certain effect within a photo collage. Many image-editing programs have features that allow you to do this. For example, PhotoSuite allows you to invert a photo or cutout from a photo both horizontally and vertically. Rotation angle Rotation tool CHAPTER 10: Which Photo-Editing Tools Are Useful for Specific Tasks 169 10 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. FIGURE 10-10 The subject now appears at the correct angle, and the computer does not look as if it’s ready to fall into his lap. This whimsical scene in Figure 10-11 would be a lot more collegial if the sub- jects were facing each other. It also might be a bit easier for the viewer to suspend disbelief if the giant butterfly were not flying upside down. In Figure 10-12, each of the animals and the motorcycle rider have been inverted using the PhotoSuite 4 horizontal flip tool. The butterfly has been placed in an upright position using the vertical flip tool. In Figures 10-13 and 10-14, I have horizontally inverted an entire photo to make it appear as if the photo were taken from an entirely different vantage point. 170 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. FIGURE 10-11 In this scene, none of the subjects are facing each other, and the giant butterfly is flying upside down. FIGURE 10-12 The horizontal and vertical flip tools allow you to reorient the subjects properly. CHAPTER 10: Which Photo-Editing Tools Are Useful for Specific Tasks 171 10 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. FIGURE 10-13 The original photo appears to have been taken from the right side of the stage. FIGURE 10-14 Horizontally inverting the photo makes the vantage point appear to be to the left of the stage. 172 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Correcting the Red-Eye Effect Red eye (that is the actual technical term) is a well-known unwanted effect that’s caused when the light from the flash is so strong that it actually penetrates your subject’s eyeballs. It then reflects the red color of the retina. This effect occurs most often in blue-eyed people or in dimly lit environments. In dim lighting, the subject’s pupils dilate, exposing more of the red retina. Prior to the advent of scanning and digital imaging, amateur photographers had only two alternatives for reducing the red-eye effect, neither of which was very desirable. The first involved purchasing a special red-eye reduction flash system that would emit a pre-flash before the actual flash. This would cause the subject’s pupils to contract, but you ended up with a lot of squinty-eyed subjects, as well as people who stopped smiling or blinked after the initial flash. The other alternative was dabbing a blue marking-pen over a subject’s eyes, but that could be tedious if you needed multiple copies of the shot, and it could obscure a subject’s true eye color. Most image-editing programs have a special feature for correcting the red-eye effect, which you can locate by checking the Help menu of the software under the keyword “red-eye.” Generally, the repair process for the red-eye effect involves the following steps: 1. Locate the red-eye correction tool in your image-editing software. 2. Use the zoom tool to enlarge the area with the red pixels, as shown in Figures 10-15 and 10-16. 3. Paint over the red pixels using the red-eye correction tool or other touchup feature provided with your image-editing program for this purpose. If your image-editing software does not have a tool specifically for correcting the red-eye effect, you can enlarge the photo as described above and apply a gray tint to the red pixels. Airbrushing Flaws from a Scanned Photo Airbrushing is a term that’s historically been applied to image-editing technology that simulates the effect of using a paintbrush to cover up flaws and unwanted effects in the picture. Generally, with modern scanning and image-editing technology, you can achieve an airbrushing effect by creating patches of pixels (colored dots) from areas in the photo surrounding the flaw. You cover the flaw using pixels matching the surrounding background. CHAPTER 10: Which Photo-Editing Tools Are Useful for Specific Tasks 173 10 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. . upside down to create a certain effect within a photo collage. Many image-editing programs have features that allow you to do this. For example, PhotoSuite allows you to invert a photo or cutout. photo makes the vantage point appear to be to the left of the stage. 172 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Correcting. it appear as if the photo were taken from an entirely different vantage point. 170 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. FIGURE