How to Decorate & Edit a Picture

Install a photo editing software that best matches your photo editing needs. Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Picnik are three popular photo editors. The photo editor you choose should match your photo editing needs and budget. For casual photo editing, Picnik is a free program. Adobe Photoshop has many more options but is an expensive program meant for professional editing.

Crop the photograph to remove any unwanted items or to make the picture the correct size for framing. Most digital cameras shoot pictures in a very high resolution, so it is beneficial to crop pictures down to a printable size.

Rotate the picture if the camera was not perfectly balanced when the photograph was shot. Rotating the photograph will make the picture look as though it was shot perfectly level.

Adjust the colors of the photograph to make them more vibrant. Most editors will allow you to apply color filters to make certain colors more prominent, for example in a shot with a lot of blue, they will make the blue hues stand out the most.

Level the photograph. Levelling the photograph is another basic editing technique where the user adjusts the amount of black and white in a photograph. An unlevelled photograph is the result of overexposure or underexposure. Leveling a photograph reduces the amount of gray in a picture and makes the picture have true blacks and whites.

Add borders or text to decorate the photograph. Some editing programs come with preinstalled templates, but you can download your own borders from the Internet. Text and borders should be used to add a purpose to an image, such as a caption.