Retouched Big O Pictures

These are screen shots from Big O that I retouched to make them funny, sexy, or romantic. Some are also designed to illustrate my Big O fan fiction.

How to Retouch Images

How do I retouch photos? The there are a few basic tricks that I use over and over.

First, you need a decent editing program. I use Corel PhotoPaint because I always have. This is an older program that came as part of CorelDraw 7. It still runs great. I've seen copies for sale on eBay for under $10. Probably you should buy Adobe PhotoShop if you can afford it, since there is a lot more PhotoShop training, books, etc. than for any other package.

The basic tricks are the ability to cut and paste complex shapes as "objects" -- so you can move them around and not have them merge with the background as soon as you drop them. Then there's the "clone" tool that copies one part of the image to another in a controlled way, which is used to extend backgrounds to cover up stuff you don't want. The magic wand tool and fill tool are also good.

One important trick is to use the blur tool to make it so all the pieces have the same level of sharpness. If possible, you should feather the edges of objects so they have softer edges. That's it, really. These are all standard tools on "real" editing packages.

Have fun!