“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams (Photographer)
Capturing a scene with your camera is surely a skill, but it’s not all of photography. The goal of photography is producing an image that brings out emotions in everyone who sees it. That takes more than clicking that “Capture” button.
Editing is seen as something that salvages bad shots. But you need it to transform even good photos into great pictures. For viewers, it can be magic, but professionals do this every day.
Here are the absolute best 8 editing techniques that can transform your ordinary clicks into something that stops walks, scrolls, and everything in between. You can learn some in minutes, while others can take years to master. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to know each one.
Getting Exposure and White Balance Right First
Learn the basics first before getting to the creative: exposure and white balance. They are the cornerstone of all subsequent edits, and without them, all future edits are on shaky ground.
If the photo is slightly underexposed, it’s typically possible to salvage it. That one that got blown out in the highlights can’t — no matter how much the editor works. Research into how people use their phones for photography reveals that more than 60% of all casual photographers never correct white balance, which is why you see so many indoor photographs with a strange look of yellow or blue.
Cropping for Better Composition
Cropping is used to correct a composition that was nearly perfect but not quite.
If the subject is static and centered, use the rule of thirds. Anytime an edge is cut off, a mediocre snapshot can be transformed into something that has real “presence. Professional photographers use cropping creatively as a compositional choice rather than just to rectify errors at the end of the shoot.
Color Grading to Set the Mood
That’s when a photo begins to take on a personality in color grading. Warm colours evoke nostalgia; cool colours evoke a distant or clinical feel.
It is not as simple as putting a filter over the top and settling for it. It’s a matter of moving shadows, mid-tones, and highlights in a slightly different direction until the whole image kind of feels like a whole. All wedding and portrait photographers have a signature color style that they stick to for all of their shoots, and actually it’s this color style that many people recognize and identify the photographer by before even getting to know their name.
Retouching Skin and Removing Blemishes
Retouching work is required everywhere, but mostly in portraits. The purpose is not to close down all pores, which will look unnatural quickly, but to soften up the temporary spots on the face which cause embarrassment, such as a pimple or an unpleasant shadow.
Professionals use frequency separation to separate the texture and the color to edit one without harming the other. The more common error is to do too much; subtlety is the way to go.
INTERESTING INSIGHTS
Among one-fourth of a study participants who edited 40+% of the total photos posted on social media, hiding skin lesions was the most common reason (36.3%) for editing.
Sharpening Without Overdoing It
The more you sharpen, the clearer it will appear, but overdoing it can backfire. It’s a way of giving yourself a treat for being disciplined.
In a portrait, or in fine details in a landscape, a light touch on the eyes can make an image pop. Oversharpening can make it look artificial. A small degree of sharpening is generally pre-programmed into most photo editing software, but a pro will most likely adjust the settings themselves to achieve a more precise result, rather than apply it to the entire image.
Reducing Noise in Low-Light Shots
Grainy and speckled images are a common issue among those who shoot in low-light environments. They lack fine details. In the past few years, there’s been a tremendous improvement in noise reduction tools, and some can actually deliver very clean results from photos taken at high ISO.
However, overdoing the noise reduction will make the image look flatter, removing the texture along with grain. Balance is everything. Sometimes a photo that has a little grain to it looks more like a natural photograph than a photo that has had all grain removed.
Selective Editing and Masking
It is not always necessary to apply the same treatment homogeneously to all parts of a photo. Creative editing — also known as masking and/or local adjustments — allows the photographer to adjust the brightness of a subject’s facial area without touching other parts of the frame, letting them lighten a sky without altering the ground beneath it.
This is probably the most important aspect of distinguishing between amateur and professional editing. Just open a reading app and start reading novels free with pictures, and pay attention to the image processing. In some novels on FictionMe, you’ll notice the entire frame being processed, while in others, there’s targeted work on specific objects within the frame. The latter approach is much more convincing, but it requires more grind, more time, and more experience.
Background Removal and Replacement
Sometimes, the subject is great, the background isn’t. Product photographers use background removal regularly because a white or transparent background is a staple in ecommerce product shots.
This technique is now much more accessible with the use of AI-powered tools. The tedious manual work with the pen tool can now be accomplished in a split second, with only a few seconds of additional time spent afterwards for manual correction on tricky edges, such as hair, fur, etc.
Bringing It All Together
All of these 8 techniques are not used separately. A good photo edit typically requires a combination, like exposure correction, careful cropping, subtle color grading, and selective adjustments, all overlaid and layered.
Photographers who always make great images may not have the most expensive camera setup. They’re the ones who embraced photo editing as a craft in its own right, as they did with the shutter press. Software will continue to change, and new software will emerge. These basics (exposure, composition, color, retouching, sharpening, noise reduction, masking, and background work) are here to stay. Memorize them, and the rest will fall into place.
FAQs
Q1. What are the techniques of photo editing?
Ans: Used for transforming raw photos into polished ones, they include fixing exposure, contrast, white balance, cropping, and sharpening.
Q2. What are the 8 elements of photography?
Ans: The eight elements of photography are: line, shape, form, texture, color, space, tone, and pattern.
Q3. What are the 7 basics of photography?
Ans: The seven basics of photography are: composition, exposure, focus, lighting, white balance, depth of field, and perspective.
