Taking photos has never been easier. Moreover, modestly priced cameras can produce very high quality pictures and even the quality of digital cameras strapped to mobile phones is steadily improving.

However, a great camera doesn’t guarantee you get great results. Although automatic modes on digital cameras try their best to determine what the correct exposure is for a given situation, software-driven decisions can go wrong sometimes, not matter whether you’re using a simple point and shoot camera or a high end SLR. When you point your camera at the scene or object you want to take a picture of, it automatically tries to determine which part of the picture should be in focus, what settings you need for a well exposed shot and how colours should be interpreted (adjusting colour levels when you’re out and about on a cloudy day, for example).

So how can you make sure your photos stand out from the crowd? Pick your flavour and find out.

Of course, these tools are great to get the best out of your pictures, but don’t get lazy. Retouching is meant to help you improve the quality of your photos and not to create them.

Level 1: Simple touch-ups

There are quite a few tools out there in this category, though I recommend downloading Picasa by Google (picasa.google.com), which runs on your computer. It’s a handy tool for managing your collection of photos and doing some of the basic editing quickly, through an extension called Picnik (an online tool). It’s very easy to use, simply applying preset touch-ups and effects with the click of a button, which can go a long way to really improving your shots without spending too much time on your PC.

Tips
• Straighten horizons or slightly slanting objects.
• Use the crop tool to correct the composition of your shot.
• Boost contrast and adjust colour temperature to add a little punch.

Level 2: Show me more

If you want to go beyond simple touch-ups and the standard presets of Picasa, try Pixlr (www.pixlr.com). This online tool gives you an Adobe Photoshop-like interface and more advanced tools to help you manipulate your photos. For example, Pixlr will allow you to use the spot-healing tool, which can help you remove blemishes and other small distracting details. Pixlr also offers a set of basic filters which you’d usually find in tools like Photoshop, offering you the possibility to add blur, vignettes and remove noise from your photos.

Tips
• You can easily improve portraits by removing skin blemishes with the spot-healing tool.
• Using the red eye reduction tool can save you when your camera lets you down, while using the burn tool allows you to bring out the colour in someone’s eyes.
• Missed something when taking your shot? Remove distracting objects with the clone stamp tool.

Level 3: Editing for enthusiasts

Going more advanced when it comes to photo editing comes at a price, though the tools you’ll have at your disposal will allow you to do some very advanced editing. For those of you looking to really boost the quality of your images, yet don’t have the time or energy to spend hours on a single shot, Adobe Lightroom offers a good set of tools that allow you to significantly improve photos within a reasonable amount of time.

Tips
• If your camera allows it, consider shooting your images in RAW format (uncompressed). When you shoot in JPEG, your camera alters the original shot taken for convenience, but image quality suffers and your editing options are already slightly limited before you transfer images to your PC.

• Lightroom can easily take up a lot of time, though a great shortcut is creating presets. This feature allows you to make detailed changes to one image, and save those changes to be used on future photo editing sessions. You’ll find many more one-click editing presets online with a little Googling, either to use directly or to take inspiration from for creative editing.

• Adobe Photoshop allows you to take photo editing to the next level. A large number of tutorials and workflows to achieve specific effects are widely available. Youtubecan be a great starting point for practical examples.

Sharing your photos with the world

Ready with your edits? What’s next? Sharing your photos with friends on Facebook is the obvious option, though there are plenty more ways of getting others to check out your shots, if you’re into photography for the art or simply to show off your mad skills.

Google+ (plus.google.com) hasn’t established itself as the Facebook-killer it was hailed as, though it’s gaining in popularity among photography enthusiasts. The platform respects photographers by keeping image quality high and also suits beginners by offering a nice set of basic tools. You can either simply apply an ‘autofix’, a sort of one-click magic wand, or get into cropping, resizing, basic exposure adjustments, and adding effects.

Flickr (www.flickr.com) has been a well-established platform for a number of years now and is popular with photography enthusiasts. Besides being able to feature your photos here, it’s easy to discover photos made by others. Also, its groups are great for photography discussions to help you improve your skills.

Pinterest is the new kid on the social media block and is centered around sharing images with friends, so it’s the perfect place to build up your collection of photos, get discovered by others and get inspiration for future pictures. Head over to www.pinterest.com and give it a try to see if it’s a good fit for you.

Christina is a web marketing content specialist and a regular blogger on various tech websites.