Whether you’re a beginner seeking guidance or an enthusiast aiming to refine your skills, our expert advice covers the fundamentals of how to edit photos. Unleash your creativity and learn the art of enhancing images with our comprehensive guide.
As much as I would love to tell you that photography starts and ends with the camera, that would be a complete lie. Photo editing is just as much a part of creating a captivating image as capturing detail. Whether it’s adjusting the colors, refining the lighting, or tweaking the composition, photo editing opens up a realm where you can bring your creative vision to life.
Opening Photoshop, Lightroom, or one of the many other photo editing applications can feel like stepping into a new world of possibilities. And, while it might seem like photo editing is a new, specifically digital part of photography, the process has been around since the birth of the craft. The only difference is that, instead of using computers, photo editing was accomplished through the use of chemicals and light.
Check out this marked-up iconic photo of James Dean. You will find the photographer’s notes on the original photo for how it needs more exposure in certain areas, which is done by leaving it to develop for longer periods.
With that, let’s run through the basics of photo editing. In this article, I’ll be using Lightroom as my photo editing software.
Things to Think About Before You Begin Editing
Before you start photo editing, there are vital considerations to remember. First, reflect on the nature of the photo and what you want to achieve. Are you looking to enhance the composition, adjust the colors, or improve the lighting? Each goal will steer your photo editing process in a specific direction.
Your camera’s capabilities will also dictate how far you can edit your photos. Shooting in the RAW format will allow for greater photo adjustments without introducing artifacts.
It’s essential to recognize that photo editing has its limits. Issues like severe blurriness, poor focus, and terrible lighting are often beyond the scope of editing. Which is to say, editing can enhance a photo, but it can’t compensate for poor initial quality.
Good lighting, focus, and composition in your original shot lay the groundwork for effective editing. Remember, editing should enhance, not overhaul, your image.
Like baking a cake, the photo editing process has a specific series of editing steps that you will want to follow in order. In photo apps like Lightroom, they are helpfully laid out in order.
To present the process, I will start with this photo of a drone operator in the wild.
We’re not looking to give this a Vogue Magazine-style edit, or give it a creative edit where we transform the location. The goal is a simple foundational correction.
Set Color Temperature by Adjusting White Balance
White balance is essential in photo editing, as it sets the color temperature of your image. Almost all cameras will have a white balance preset and, for the most part, I would recommend using the Automatic White Balance (AWB) setting.
In the presented photo, it’s slightly too cold for the environment. This is because we are photographing inside a forest, and the white balance setting is trying to find a balance between the streaks of warm sunlight and the cold shadows within the ruins.
Adjusting the white balance here is particularly crucial as we are in mixed lighting conditions. I will move the slider to the right to warm up the shot and adjust the tint, as there’s too much green cast.
Therefore, changing the slider toward the magenta end will reduce the vibrance from the green foliage and return the skin color closer to how it was shot.
Enhancing Exposure and Contrast
Exposure and contrast adjustments can dramatically improve an image’s visual impact. Correcting underexposed or overexposed areas and tweaking the contrast can bring out details and add depth to your photos.
In my photo, as we were in a forest and I was trying to preserve the sun’s brightness in the background, the image is slightly under-exposed. As a result, the exposure needs to be lifted. The exposure tools can be somewhat confusing.
For clarity, here’s a breakdown:
- Exposure adjusts overall image brightness.
- Contrast controls the difference between lights and darks.
- Highlights adjusts the brightness of the brightest areas.
- Shadows adjusts the brightness of the darkest areas.
- Whites set the brightness of the brightest point.
- Blacks set the brightness of the darkest point.
You can always use the histogram (in the top-right) to obtain even exposure. The histogram is a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in your photo. It displays the distribution of pixels from pure black (on the left) to pure white (on the right), with mid-tones in-between.
If you see sharp lines on either end, your shadows have been black, or your highlights have clipped. However, it’s worth noting that this isn’t always a detriment.
For example, it would make sense for the shadows to remain extremely dark in this photograph. When you try to remove all the shadows and reduce all the highlights in a photo, it may look unnatural, and you will lose contrast.
Vibrancy and Saturation: Bringing Colors to Life
Next, we want to add a little bit of life back into the photo. It’s not uncommon for cameras to shoot with a natural picture profile, and this profile will keep contrast and saturation to a minimum to allow for greater post-adjustment (although, if photographing in RAW, it’s not an issue).
Vibrancy and saturation are vital to making your images stand out. This involves enhancing the intensity and richness of colors without making them look unnatural.
The right balance can make your image more dynamic and visually appealing. Quite like seasoning, you only ever want to adjust these parameters slightly. I’ve only adjusted the photo by 33.
When you initially move these sliders, it may look like they are doing the same thing. However, two different things are going on:
- Vibrancy enhances the intensity of colors in a photo while protecting skin tones and preventing over-saturation.
- Saturation adjusts the overall intensity and vividness of colors in a photo, affecting all hues equally.
Cropping and Composition: Framing Your Subject
Cropping is more than just cutting out parts of an image; it’s about refining the composition. Techniques like the rule of thirds help in framing the subject effectively, leading to a more balanced and engaging photo.
As this was a candid shot, the wall is slightly off the horizontal axis. Cropping the photo will allow me to straighten my image and make it more visually pleasing.
Want to dive into the essentials of composition? Start with this guide to cropping:
Sharpening is a subtle—yet crucial—step in photo editing meant to enhance the clarity of an image. It’s easy to go too far in this step. It’s best used for minor adjustments to make your image crisp without appearing unnatural.
It’s also worth thinking about your photo’s final destination. Compression will be applied to your photo if uploaded to social media (rather than a dedicated photo-viewing library) due to the sheer amount of daily uploads.
Therefore, using a dose of sharpening can help keep your images crisp.
Finalize and Export Your Edited Photos
Below are the before and after of the original image.
The steps above help get your photos to their finalized endpoint or a solid starting point. You can add creative adjustments once you’ve set the foundations for needed corrections.
Finalizing your photos involves choosing the correct file type for your needs. Formats like JPEG are great for sharing online, while TIFF is better for higher-quality prints. Every photo editing app has different export options, so familiarize yourself with these to optimize your final output.
Even though we haven’t performed what could be considered a fashion or creative edit, just following basic photo editing principles has transformed the snap.
As you can see, the before looks almost as though it were taken at night.
Edit Photos with Shutterstock Create
Shutterstock Create provides a user-friendly platform to perform all the edits mentioned above. Its intuitive interface allows for easy uploading, editing, and downloading of images.
With new AI features, it simplifies complex editing tasks, making it a go-to tool for beginners and professionals.
License this cover image via Nailotl and Shacil.
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