Graphics - Manipulating Pictures

If a photo is too dark, you can lighten it by changing the brightness. You can adjust the contrast as well as the color range. To do this in MS Photo Editor, use the Image menu and select Balance.

This will reveal the Balance Options dialog box.

To adjust brightness, contrast, or gamma (color), simply move the slider to the right or left. When you click OK, the picture will update to show the changes. If you don't want to keep the changes, use the Edit menu and choose Undo to set the picture back to the original settings. MS Photo Editor has only one "level" of undo, that is, you can only undo the last thing you did to the picture. High end editors like Adobe Photoshop have unlimited levels of undo.

One way to use the Balance options is to "gray out" the picture so that it has little color or detail but still gives a hint of what it was. Then the "grayed out" picture can be used as a background for a web page or the cell in a table. Any text that is displayed on top will be clearly visible. The underlying background picture will not compete with the text for your eye. See example below.

If you do not have access to MS Photo Editor, there is an excellent free program called IrfanView. Next we will show where the menu options are in IrfanView to accomplish the same changes we made to pictures using Photo Editor.