20th September 2000

Today's Sponsor Digital photos are seldom perfect out of the chute. But that's the beauty in the analog-allergic format: all tweaking is done in post-production stages. Need better white balance? Bam. Need a bit less blue? Boom. Does it look better than the image you began with? Only one way to find out: do a flip-flop comparison. Be sure all other windows are minimized or closed before you continue. Now, launch one (or more instances) of your favorite image viewer / editor. Open each image (in question) in a separate pane -- then maximize the window(s). Once ready, use the ALT+TAB (or ALT+ESC) keyboard combo to toggle window focus quickly. To take another (less extensive) route: once you've applied a particular operation on an image, use your editor's UNDO / REDO feature to eyeball the changes. In the end, you should walk away with the best looking image. Never rely on your [brain] memory to pick the winner; that's what [computer] memory is for.