When it comes to digital photography, I think editing is as important as the darkroom was for film photography. But now, we have so many more tools available.
In the attached video, I show some of my favorite images and walk through every step it took to get from the raw file to the delivered image. Instead of transcribing the video, I thought I’d outline some key points that would make for a great edit.
Highlights and Contrast
When a viewer first looks at an image, he or she is naturally attracted to the brightest area of the frame or the area with the highest contrast. We can keep this in mind while capturing the image and also during editing. This is much easier with newer cameras with electronic viewfinders, because you see the actual image before it is captured (at least for natural lighting situations), allowing you to make decisions on the fly to maximize the effect of certain lighting conditions. Are. When the image is taken to post-production, we can use editing tools to enhance or reduce certain elements and take things even further.
For example, perhaps your subject is the brightest element in the frame. However, if you push things further, the brightest element of your subject may be the dress they are wearing. This might work well for an advertising campaign, but not so well for a portrait where you want the person to be the star of the show. In this case, we can use tools to reduce the brightness of the dress and increase the brightness of the subject’s face, thereby drawing the viewer’s attention where we want.
It’s also worth noting that your subject shouldn’t always be the brightest element in the frame. Another option is to place your subject in the brightest area of the frame. Since the viewer’s eye is attracted to bright areas, they are more likely to focus on the subject before exploring the rest of the frame.
watch your edges
Speaking of exploring the rest of the frame, the edges of your images can be just as important to the viewer’s experience as making sure the subject catches their attention. Although you want the subject to be the star of the show, the rest of the image still matters. We want the viewer to see and experience the image as a whole. For this reason, I try to ensure clean edges on my images – or at least avoid elements at the edges that leave viewers wondering what’s being left out.
This practice is important when taking an image and when cropping or straightening during editing. My goal is for the viewer to look at the subject, move around the image, and then return to the subject (which is why composition is so important, although that’s a completely different topic). I view anything at the edges as potential “roads” that lead the viewer away from the frame. If there’s something distracting on the side, I either remove it or find a way to reduce its impact.
Local adjustments are your friend
Too often, I see people spend all their time making global adjustments to improve an image. However, local adjustments give you far more control over the final effect of your edits. I like to think of global adjustments as determining the overall feeling of the image, while local adjustments guide the viewer to the subject or achieve a specific creative intent.
Because of this, global adjustments should generally be easy to copy and paste across an entire set, with minor tweaks to white balance and exposure (these days, I let AI editing handle most of this work). From there, I spend twice as much time on local adjustments.
photo for editing
Sometimes, you can’t get your desired image straight into the camera due to time constraints, gear limitations or the fact that camera sensors capture less dynamic range than our eyes. That’s why it’s essential to understand what you can and can’t do in post-production – specific to your camera.
Just because I can stop a file down more than four times in exposure doesn’t mean you can do the same in a different situation. Understanding how far you can push and pull a file under different ISO and lighting conditions will help you make better decisions when capturing images. Similarly, knowing your skill level with local adjustments and other equipment will give you an idea of what’s possible before you press the shutter.
Having such a mindset when shooting also makes you a better photographer, because you always keep the end result in mind.
Edit for emotion or art
When someone shows me a photo of a trip, I often hear, “This kind of shows how beautiful it was, but the picture doesn’t do it justice.” As professional photographers, our job is to provide images that not only do justice to the location but also show the viewer its maximum potential. If the feeling of the place was the feeling of a deep, warm sunset and the image doesn’t convey that, then it’s our job to bring that feeling to life.
Sometimes, this includes choices about subject placement or timing during capture. Other times, post-production skills are needed to improve the image.
If editing to convey a sense of place is one side of the coin, the other side is editing for artistic intent. Not all images need to be true to life; As an artist, you are free to pursue an image as you wish. For me, my goal is to keep most of my edits in my RAW processing software. This usually means I don’t add elements that weren’t in the original scene or combine multiple images into one. However, I will increase and tighten the exposure dramatically and adjust hue, light, and saturation for maximum effect.
conclusion
A lot goes into capturing and editing an image. These five tips only scratch the surface of what it takes to create a masterpiece. And like all rules, sometimes these tips may not apply. However, for me, most of my favorite images follow these principles. Hopefully, these tips will make you not only a better editor but also a better photographer.
