How To Edit Photos

Editing photos is a necessary step for every photographer striving to create the best possible image. The photo editing can be a very rewarding process yet at the same time very tedious. It is very subjective and may change over time as will your style as a photographer. In this article I will briefly cover a suggested process, often called workflow.

There are many ways to catalogue your photos and many programs to edit your photos with. I suggest creating a folder for the year with successive subfolders containing the month, date and event title, an ‘edited’ folder to export into, and finally a ‘resized’ folder to export smaller photos for sharing.

As for programs I suggest trying a free trial of Adobe Lightroom. Most programs can help you get the same end result but Lightroom has presets, quick keys, and a very user-friendly system in general. Note that monitors and printers are calibrated differently based on manufacturers and models so some people choose to purchase a color calibration program. Others print a few photos with varying exposure and color and find a self-printing station that works for them.

As for the editing process itself I suggest applying a preset during the importing step so that the settings which you know that you always use are applied to all of your photos, thus saving you a lot of time. Three that I suggest starting with are color (sometimes called vibrance, saturation, or enhance), sharpness (sometimes called clarity), and contrast. Next I would suggest adding a vignette at this point if you are going to do so. Adding a vignette will affect the exposure in certain areas of the photo so it is good to apply it before you start to tweak the exposure. Following this I would crop the photo until you are happy with it.

Next on the list of steps I would work on the exposure (the histogram is a useful tool), shadows, white balance (temperature), fine tune the contrast and clarity, and lastly do any touch up editing (i.e. spot removal).

When you are ready to take on more complex editing look into adjusting the tonal curve, adjusting individual colors, and using tools like the graduated filter.

With these adjustments having been made to your photo(s) you are well on your way to becoming a more efficient and skilled editor of your photographs.