How to Edit a Business Picture

If you are creating a brochure, pamphlet or any other advertising material for a business and plan on using photos, you need to edit the pictures to better fit your needs. However, you must take a few areas into consideration to make the image more appealing, such as time stamps, business logos and negative space. Checking these specific areas of your business photos and correcting any issues you have can keep the images legal to use.

Remove any date and time stamps placed on the picture. These often appear in the corner of the image in the form of orange figures with the day, month, year and often time of day printed directly into the image. There is no use for this content and it can be distracting. You can easily crop the picture in an editing program to remove the section of the image taken up by the time stamp.

Inspect the image for any logos of other companies. This can be on clothing, shoes or even in the background. Crop this area out of the image. However, if the content is important to the image, you can use the blur tool in the editing software to blur out the company logo. Leaving a company log in your image can not only advertise for or against the company, but the other company can sue you for using the image.

Remove any individuals from the image that you do not have a signed release form from. You are not allowed to use the likeness of an individual without his consent. However, if you are using images provided to you from a photography source, such as an online shop that sells you images, it is up to it to have the signed release form, so you can use the image. This is similar to using a logo you do not have permission to use. If you or your company took the image and the individual did not sign any release form you can be hit with a lawsuit. It is best to save yourself the trouble and cover your back.

Crop out any unnecessary space in the image. If there is a large background or area of the image that has no relevance to your picture, you need to remove it. Not only is it distracting, but you most likely have limited space on your advertisement and there is no need to waste it on the unnecessary areas of your pictures.