By Kim Komando
Gannett News Service

Have you ever taken an important picture but wished certain elements were different?

Perhaps the background is distracting or the people should have stood more in the center. All you need is a computer and some specialized software to turn an inferior photo into a keeper.

While the photo-editing software standard is Adobe Photoshop (www.adobe.com, $649), you don't need to be that extravagant to get good results.

Photoshop Elements, a less powerful yet capable version from Adobe, is $99. Microsoft has a more basic program, Picture It! (www.microsoft.com) for $50.

There are a number of other programs available, including Jasc Paint Shop Pro (www.jasc.com, $79) and Ulead PhotoImpact (www.ulead.com, $90).

You can fix redeye and adjust brightness and hues. You can take people out of pictures, or put them in, make photomontages, create special effects, and many other things. It just takes practice.

Here's an example: In a photo circulated last year, a man dangled from a helicopter. A great white shark jumped from the water, obviously about to snatch him. But the incident never happened — it was a case of two pictures combined.

This isn't all that difficult. In the Adobe programs, you would use the lasso tool to remove the shark from its picture. You would then use layers, with the cut and paste functions, to place the shark into the helicopter picture. The lasso tool is used to precisely trim the shark. Cloning and smoothing tools are then used to clean up background problems. What are you left with? A picture that is truly unbelievable.

A similar procedure can be used to clean up a background. Let's say you take a picture of a football player making a spectacular catch. But a scoreboard is behind him, dulling the effect. You can remove the scoreboard.

How hard is this to learn? On a scale of one to 10, I'd give it a five.