I'd just been thinking about photography

and how it used to be in the 'bad old, good old days' before reading Sandra's comment for the post below.

I'd shoot quite a lot of film, trying experimental stuff, tweaking exposure, looking for unusual angles and subjects in ordinary places. Most of it was done in 35mm and processed by whoever did cheap, tolerable printing.

There'd be anticipation, excitement even, when collecting the packets of prints, and it was hard not to almost rip open the flimsy envelopes in our eagerness to see the results. This was almost always followed by disappointment at the framing or print exposure, because they'd always print for 18% grey, neutral colour balance and clip off the edges of the image. It was virtually impossible to get a regular machine print that was any better than passable if the subject or colour was even slightly out of the ordinary, and even big enlargements were often poor in this respect if not handled by a proper printer.

The weather here is supposed to be raining heavily, and being housebound had me thinking about photography and the kind of shots I might take. There was a picture I'd take in Thornton Heath of the rise going up to the station from the clock tower side, just as the sun was setting. Orange light was glinting off wet surfaces, vehicles, windows, tarmac etc and much was in silhouette. The original print was washed out, pale sky, white highlights, detail in the shadows where there should have been none. At the time I was lucky enough to have access to a darkroom, and reprinted it deep deep deep to 10X8 on an Agfa satin paper to minimise details and pull all those glorious colours out. It wouldn't have won competitions because it was just an urban sunset, but there was no comparison.

It is so easy to create a good digital image these days: all you have to do is take a technically reasonable image and use the simple, free tools available. All the images I display were adjusted using Irfanview (windows only - sorry Mac users). If you're saddled with a Mac but without a bottomless budget then The GIMP is free, very powerful (much more so than Irfanview) and quite difficult to use for a novice. iPhoto, as bundled with OSX is excellent in some areas, utterly woeful in others, and a very poorly thought through package for it's lack of resizing tools.

*snip*
Just realising I've been writing (more) rubbish.

Camera phones images are the new Polaroid pictures. Polaroid images were always garbage, although some people hung their artistic pretensions on them, but they were only ever really an 'instant record' for the amateur (I'll ignore their professional use for now) desirable for the sake of novelty.

I'm probably a snob, too.

But don't just leave those 'ordinary' digital images in their disappointingly vanilla state - do something to make them interesting.

First tip - crop the image in whatever way is necessary from the highest resolution to make it 'perfect'. It's often not possible to perfectly frame an image in camera, and may even be undesirable if your hands are a bit shaky, since you can lose something off the edge of the frame as you press the shutter release. Cut away undesirable borders to home in on the subject or to remove items that were so commonplace that you didn't see them when taking the image. Use the rule of thirds as a guide IF it helps, and try to aim for a set of dimensions that do the image justice in the role it's to have.

Always make further adjustments with the image at the resolution you're going to use it at. If you're going to display it on the web then re-size it to something sensible: 1024Xwhatever for landscape, 900Xwhatever for portrait. The reason is that sharpening etc works differently according to the actual resolution of the image. However beware of over-sharpening, since sometimes a smoother, softer image is much more desirable.

Play around with contrast, gamma and brightness - they each affect similar aspects of the image in different ways. Be aware too that increasing contrast may also increase colour saturation to the point of it looking unpleasant, and likewise dropping contrast may flatten an image, requiring increased saturation to bring some life back.

If your chosen image manipulation package permits it, adjust selected areas that need radical alteration - such as skies - without adjusting the whole image.

Have fun. If it doesn't work out then all you've lost is time and electrons: there's no chemicals, paper or darkroom hire to worry about. If it does work then you've gained some great images, and regardless, it will make you think about how you take pictures and what can be done to make better ones.