The proliferation of digital cameras and powerful yet inexpensive scanners is giving computer-savvy users much more control over their pictures than they had in the past. The days of filling up a roll of film and impatiently waiting to see how your pictures turned out are quickly fading. Now, it's possible to preview shots directly on the camera, get rid of the ones you don't want on the fly to free up space, and immediately import all your images into your computer for printing.
The problem is that all this new technology hasn't necessarily made people better photographers. Shots still come out fuzzy, colors often don't look quite right, images get overexposed or underexposed, and digital data introduces anomalies that we never had to deal with in the past. Fortunately, inexpensive image editors let you correct and enhance images using the same tools professionals have relied on for years. You can read our comparative review, "Recipes For A Perfect Picture," in this issue to find an editor that's right for you; most of the tools and tips in this article apply to any of the popular image editors available today.
When you capture images with a scanner or digital camera, the picture is stored as a series of pixels (picture elements). Pixels are individual dots that contain unique color information; the number of pixels in an image defines its resolution. For example, an image with a resolution of 800 x 600 has 800 columns of vertical pixels and 600 rows of horizontal pixels, for a total of 480,000 pixels.
