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Basic photo editing steps 
There are countless ways to enhance an image by editing it on your computer. Whether you do some simple cropping and resizing on an easy-to-use program like Irfanview, or a more advanced editor like Photoshop, or something in between, photos from a digital camera almost always need to be edited. You may want to reduce the giant image to use it online, or crop it to improve it. What follows are some basic, most frequently used steps to process digital images.Always work on a duplicate of an original image. If you make a mistake along the way, just make another copy of the original and start editing again. Some images need little, if any, post-processing prior to printing. However, the same photo may need enhancing if it will be displayed on a website. Six basic photo editing steps: 1. Open the photo via the image editing software 'open' menu. 2. Flip the image if its orientation needs to be changed. 3. Crop - remove unwanted portions of a photo if desired; crop to a specific aspect ratio (eg. 4×6", 5×7" 8×10"), particularly if you plan to make prints. See below for more about cropping. 4. Resize - resizing is used to make a photo smaller. Resizing to a larger image may cause fuzziness. Its height and width change proportionally if the “constrain” or “keep aspect ratio” setting is enabled. See below for more on resizing. 5. Enhance the image by adjusting its brightness and contrast, sharpening it if an image looks “soft,” or correcting a color cast to make an image have more true-to-life colors. If you're in a hurry, good editing programs like the basic Photoshop Elements will fix your photos with one click of a button. 6. Save an image. For printing , save your full size image as a high-quality JPG. For a website, save a resized-smaller photo as a high-quality JPG. ('Quality' refers to the resolution, not the size). You will be given options to adjust the compression level. If the compression is set too low, the image will degrade in visual quality. During any step in the editing process, if you do not like a change you made, click the “undo” command. Important Note: If you find that you have to go back to a JPG image you've already edited more than once to do some more editing, don't! Opening and resaving a JPG image multiple times will cause deterioration in the image quality. Always return to the original picture, make a copy, and re-edit that one. Resizing a digital image A digital image can look huge when viewed on a computer monitor. Not only that, but its file size is usually very large ... sometimes many megabytes in size! When an image is reduced in size, its file size becomes much smaller too. You may need to resize images before sending them by email attachment, as many email programs like Gmail have a 25 MB limit. You may also need to resize smaller when planning to display it on a web page, online gallery or auction site. One rule of thumb is to resize it to fit within a normal browser window so site visitors won't have to scroll to see the entire photo. All image editing programs include resizing tools. Most are straightforward, easy to use and take much of the guesswork out of resizing and compressing images. Irfanview is ideal for this. Photo editing programs will also let you select the JPG compression levels so the visual quality of an image doesn't look degraded. Always choose 100%, which represents little to no compression. Sharpening 'Sharpening' makes the picture look more in focus. It's a digital 'trick' that makes the photo look as if it is. You don't want to do this if you're going to print a very large photo. Otherwise, sharpening the photo once will improve small focusing errors. Don't overdo this! Cropping Cropping is a way to improve the composition of a digital photo. By using the crop tool found in all image editing programs, unwanted or distracting portions of a photo can be removed. Cropping also lets you visually focus in on the main subject. 
 Also, before printing or having a photo printed by a commercial photo processor, crop it to fit the paper size you plan to use. This gives you control over how an image is cropped. When cropping, or doing any type of image editing for that matter, always work on a copy of the original, rather than the original itself. If you make a mistake, the original is still available to start again. Basic steps for cropping a photo: 1. Open a photo in the editing program. 2. Select the cropping tool. In Irfanview, you can skip this step. 3. Select an aspect ratio for a standard print if you intend to have the photo printed. 4. Position the tool in a top area of your image where you want the crop to begin. Next drag the tool until the desired area is outlined. 5. Click OK or on the crop tool icon. Select undo if you are not satisfied with your selection. 6. Save the image in the desired file format such as JPEG and give the file a new name. Renaming an edited file prevents overwriting the original. Aspect ratios for popular print sizes:
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