Did you scan a picture which you want to use on your fake card, but it turned out really bad??

Well, this section here will teach you how to touch up this picture quite easily!!

Straighten It Out:
You just can't make a good image without it being straight. To fhix this image, SELECT ALL (Select menu: All), and then go to Rotate (Edit menu: Transform: Rotate) and rotate that image into place!

There, that's the ticket.

 

Fix Up the Colors:
This image looks WAY to flush. The black aren't dark enough and the whites just don't cut it. What you do now is head over to Brightness/Contrast (Image menu: Adjust: Brightness/Contrast) and iron out all those color kinks.

First off though, let's give you a quick run through of Brightness and Contrast.

.... A low brightness makes the image look dark. A high brightness makes it look really lite.

(Left: Low Brightness) (Right: High Brightness)

.... A low contrast makes the image look more gray. A high contrast makes blacks more darker, and whites more lighter.

(Left: Low Contrast) (Right: High Contrast)

.... Now adjust the Brightness and Contrast to your liking. Instead of a much dimmer picture, you now have a more vibrant image.

Now next... suppose Gengar doesn't look as purple as you want it, or maybe the ground is not the correct shade of yellow you want. Now it's time to fiddle with the Hue.

Go to Hue/Saturation (Image menu: Adjust: Hue/Saturation), and check out the Hue part of it. With it, you can adjust the colors to the correct spot you want. More it to the left, and Gengar turns Green:

More it to the right, and Gengar turns more red:

Get the point of Hue now? ;) .... However, since we only want Gengar to be more purple and the ground more yellow, we can adjust the hue slider to the colors we want.

There we are! .... And look! We're finished!! (^_^)

... This guide here teaches you the basics of how to clean up your images. We were able to turn this:

Into this:

Using only the very basic Photoshop tools that come with the program. Pretty neat, huh? ... With a little practice, you can fix up just about ANY picture you want.

....

There's ALSO another function called "Auto Levels" (Image menu: Adjust: Auto Levels), which most of the times can bypass all the Brightness/Contrast and Hue business. If you use it, it can most of the time clean up the image into something nice. .... For example, the original cards I had scanned which I took the pictures from for my Safari Zone translation all were really bad looking. By using the Auto Levels function, I was able to clean them up by a lot. ;)