WE all make an effort to improve our digital photographs with a varying amount of success. Guy has been doing it for years and came to show us some ways to go from so-so to superb.

It requires a capable photo-editing programme, a degree of experience and a certain amount of painstaking patience to get there.

Guy spends a lot of time making his improvements and uses an expensive programme, but you can start quietly and see how you go. Some programmes are completely free – and quite useful for making many considerable straightforward improvements. Then, if you develop a taste for it, you can always invest in better programmes and equipment later. The degree of dedication and the amount of patience and time devoted to it is up to you. It can pay big dividends.

The basic material to work with comes from your camera or scanner. Naturally, the better they are the better the end result from the (more) information captured. Cameras catch the information for you in RAW mode. It usually processes this to reduce the file size into JPG or TIFF formats and in the process some information is discarded. Serious photographers prefer to work with the entire RAW data for better control, but that will come only if you get really involved.

Meantime, get used to taking lots of shots, even of the same subject, as some will prove to be better than the others. Choose the ones you want to keep (and make copies for backup, of course).

For editing, work only on copies. That way if anything goes wrong you can start again with a fresh copy.

After selecting one from a series on the same subject, Guy started by introducing us to layers. These are like see-through sheets of cellophane. Working only on these allows you to leave the background picture unchanged. At any time you can view the state of progress towards the end product by looking at the picture though the layers. This is known as non-destructive editing and recommended.

As Guy talked us through what he was doing, layers were used to eliminate flaws; crop the picture; edit out distracting features and changing the intensity of colours.

Judicious use of framing, coupled with ‘feathering’ (where sharp changes are graduated between areas) allowed him to produce a pleasing vignette effect typical of old family photographs.

He then used similar techniques to enhance a picture of foliage. For a picture of a young lady he exchanged a messy, complicated background for a more attractive one. Just for fun he created a compilation of some surreal effects within a view of an internal corridor or colonnade.

Finally he recreated a beautiful view of a road alongside a canal by incorporating major features from several sources introducing colour and an interesting sky.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday, April 8, at All Saints Lesser Hall, Victoria Square, Penarth, 7.30pm for 8pm - connections: all about plugs and sockets. Visitors always welcome. See penarthcomputerclub.co.uk