Editing is not just about fixing flaws or applying filters. It is also a creative tool to enhance your visual narrative, the story you want to tell with your images. In this article, you will learn some tips and techniques to improve your editing skills and create more impactful and expressive photos.
Before you start editing, you need to select your best shots from the ones you took. This is not always easy, but it is essential to focus on quality over quantity. Look for images that capture your vision, convey your message, and have a strong composition, lighting, and mood. You can use tools like rating, flagging, or tagging to organize your photos and compare them side by side.
Choosing the best shots starts with taking the best shots when you hit the shutter or record buttons taking into consideration the final editing process.
I engage in both editing and directing roles, which affords me a distinct advantage during the editing phase. During the pre-digital age, I logged my best shots on paper. Nowadays, I mark these shots on the camera. This approach proves exceptionally valuable, particularly when faced with stringent time constraints, such as TV. From an aesthetic standpoint, my primary emphasis centers on the beginning and ending shots, with a particular focus on the opening shots. In this fast-paced era, a captivating opening sequence is paramount to engage the audience from the outset. Subsequently, the narrative assumes precedence, and my shot selection revolves around their contribution to the storyline rather than composition or lighting.
Logging is a great way to categorise your clips so that when it comes to the editing process, you can find what you're looking for without having the watch through tons and tons of clips.
Absolutely, selecting the best shots before editing is a crucial step in the photography process. It's all about curating your collection to showcase your vision and message effectively. Quality should always take precedence over quantity. To do this, I recommend reviewing your images with a discerning eye, considering composition, lighting, and mood. Utilizing tools like rating, flagging, or tagging can simplify the organization and comparison process, allowing you to refine your selection and ensure that your final edits result in impactful and visually compelling photographs.
If you’re looking for an entertaining read on this subject, I suggest architectural, photographer, Mike Kelley‘s book, “I’ll just fix it in post and other lies I tell myself.“
One of the simplest and most effective ways to enhance your visual narrative is to crop and straighten your images. Cropping allows you to remove unwanted distractions, emphasize your subject, and create a more balanced and harmonious frame. Straightening helps you align your horizon, verticals, and diagonals, and correct any perspective distortion. You can use the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, or other compositional guidelines to help you crop and straighten your images.
Similar to a quickly written paragraph, a photograph gains efficacy when the fat has been trimmed away. To ensure the intended message is crystal clear, it may be essential to refine an image to its core essentials. The streamlined photograph not only enhances its visual appeal but also conveys its message with greater precision. Too often are we focused on a pretty picture or even some trivial technique at the expense of a meaningful message. I challenge you to crop and crop again. You will find a new sense of composition and eventually learn when to crop and when to practice restraint.
Fill the frame when you photograph, and make your cropping variations in camera. I.e wide shot, close-up, mid-range and so on. Yes, you can crop afterwards, but you have a better starting point getting into the habit of doing a variety of shooting angles. There is a limit to how much you can crop and how much you can enlarge afterwards. (Loss of detail, added noise and so on) It is also the best way to maximise a smaller megapixel camera. Higher megapixels can be cropped more, especially for web usage. For print, you want to keep as many megapixels as you can. This is why commercial photographers and fine artists invest in camera systems with a high megapixel count. To be able to do large prints. (Not billboard).
Cropping in today's day and age is imperative. Most of us watch TV in a 16x9 ratio, but we probably consume the most content on a day-to-day bases in a 9x16 mobile environment. Learning what works across both landscape and vertical formats will set you up well for multi-platform edits, which have become more and more common place.
Certainly, cropping and straightening are powerful tools to improve the storytelling aspect of your images. Cropping enables you to refine the composition by eliminating distractions and highlighting key elements, while straightening ensures that your lines and perspectives appear natural and unwarped. These adjustments contribute to a more visually pleasing and cohesive narrative. Leveraging compositional guidelines like the rule of thirds or the golden ratio further aids in creating balanced and engaging visual stories. By combining these techniques, you can refine your photographs to better convey your intended message and capture your viewers' attention effectively.
If you choose to have a crooked photo please consider the amount of crookedness needs to be dramatic. Slightly crooked can be detected by our human eye and it will always look unprofessional. Strong images often have the power to pull you in a little closer with a dramatic freshness about them. Think fairly tight cropping before the shot but also take loose crop shots vertical and horizontal in case you will want to use the image with easy to read wraparound text added later.
Another basic but important step in editing is to adjust the exposure and contrast of your images. Exposure refers to how bright or dark your image is, and contrast refers to the difference between the light and dark areas. You can use tools like histograms, sliders, or curves to adjust these parameters and achieve the optimal exposure and contrast for your image. You want to avoid overexposing or underexposing your image, and create a good balance between the highlights, midtones, and shadows.
Leveraging over 5 years of diverse experience as a commercial photographer, I've refined the art of adjusting exposure and contrast in image editing. Exposure controls brightness, while contrast defines light and shadow distinctions. I use tools like histograms, sliders, and curves to craft the ideal balance, avoiding overexposure or underexposure. It's not just about technique; it's about storytelling. I tailor each image to convey your unique perspective, ensuring it resonates as a compelling visual narrative that aligns with your brand identity.
Certainly, adjusting exposure and contrast is fundamental to enhancing the visual impact of your photos. These edits can transform a flat or unremarkable image into one that grabs the viewer's attention. Exposure adjustments help you find that sweet spot where details in highlights and shadows are preserved, avoiding overexposure or underexposure. Meanwhile, fine-tuning contrast creates depth and dimension, making your subject pop against the background. Using tools like histograms, sliders, or curves empowers you to craft the perfect balance, ensuring your images convey the mood and atmosphere you envisioned. These basic yet crucial steps in editing are about refining your storytelling
In the realm of art, be it photography, film, or literature, technical knowledge, often referred to as "vocabulary," is vital. When I started photography 23 years ago, I initially focused on complex techniques like shallow depth of field (this wasn't easy with the analog cameras, yes I'm old) and light trails, especially challenging in the pre-digital era. However, true mastery requires more than technical skill—it demands an understanding of the grammar of your medium. In photography, this means knowing how exposure and contrast serve your message. Some photographers prioritize aesthetics, but it's crucial to bridge the gap between beauty and audience connection. The art lies in harmonizing technical expertise with effective storytelling.
A blown out sky is blown out white with no color or detail information to process in post editing. A solid black strong shadow will not yield the detail level desired if too underexposed. This is why it is best to shoot manual so you can fine tune the shot for best post processing options. Underexposing to hold detail in the highlights is my first priority knowing I can easily fix in post.
Color and tone are essential elements of your visual narrative, as they can evoke emotions, create atmosphere, and convey meaning. You can use tools like white balance, saturation, vibrance, hue, or color grading to enhance the color and tone of your images. You can also use presets, filters, or styles to apply a consistent look and feel to your images. You want to choose colors and tones that match your vision, mood, and message, and avoid oversaturating or desaturating your image.
I begin my creative process by asking fundamental questions: "What is the key message I wish to convey?" and "What emotions should the audience experience?" Once these are clarified, I determine the visual direction, whether it involves saturating or desaturating colors, embracing warmth or coolness, and so on. While the terms color correction and color grading are often associated with film editing, the principles apply to photography as well. Color correction is where we fix basic errors such as color spills, over/under exposed areas, etc. In contrast, color grading involves adjusting tools like saturation, white balance, and vibrance to ensure that the photograph effectively communicates the intended message in the right mood.
I find when editing my photos that happen to have varying light sources I enjoy using quick tools like the radial tool to illuminate my color and style even more to my liking. Also, if you are an architectural photographer this is a great way to refine street lights, especially neon ones.
Is the shot to be documenting realism or a more artful aproach...each photographer needs to address this question when editing. Looking for a tight color pallet or complimenting colors within an image can help with your editing decisions. A raw file can give you PhotoShop options of editing each colors' hue, saturation and brightness. This can be time consuming but rewarding.
The final step in editing is to add some details and effects to your images, to make them more sharp, clear, and expressive. You can use tools like sharpening, noise reduction, clarity, texture, or vignette to add some details and effects to your images. You can also use tools like dodge and burn, spot removal, or cloning to enhance or remove specific areas of your image. You want to add details and effects that enhance your visual narrative, and avoid overdoing or underdoing them.
Editing is a skill that requires practice, experimentation, and creativity. By following these tips and techniques, you can enhance your visual narrative with editing, and create more captivating and meaningful photos.
My photography professor used to say "Whatever you can fix before taking a photo, do it!". While you can add details and effects in post, it won't make things better if your shot is crappy. Use effects and add details with some restraint. Yes, try things out and push the limits. But once you get more experienced, pull it back. With AI and more enhanced editing techniques coming in, people will appreciate a good photo. But only when it doesn't look too edited. Balance is key and less is more.
The human eye will want to look at lighter areas of the image first. Over sharpening can look unprofessional. HDR is a wonderful tool. Play with it and see if it can enhance in a tasteful way. Slowing down enough to really look helps me. You can't fix it if you can't see the problem to fix in the first place.
Dodge and burn ?? Helps me direct the attention of the viewer and lift the most important sections of my shot. A very powerful tool in photo editing indeed, it’s tricky how simple bright and darks could change the whole story of a photo
Here is few tips from me ?? To avoid common camera setting mistakes, remember to utilize manual settings when appropriate, adjust ISO according to lighting conditions, set the correct white balance, focus accurately, choose suitable shutter speeds, understand aperture's impact on depth of field, ensure proper exposure, review histograms, use flash judiciously, shoot in RAW format for editing flexibility, apply composition rules, utilize tripods for stability, keep the lens clean, use a lens hood to reduce flare, consult your camera's manual, take your time with each shot, and carry spare memory cards and batteries for backup, ensuring you capture high-quality photos with precision and creativity. Happy shooting ??
Editing and retouching within the digital space has never been easier with the tools we have at our fingertips. It is a controversial topic, as it has always been, and finding the right balance is subjective. Just because it's easy to add a filter, blur texture, change shapes, remove details and objects, and use generative AI - it doesn't mean we should. My personal use of editing and retouching is to bring an image in line with reality. Cameras record images differently to our eyes. Our eyes are better at adjusting to different light. Colours come out differently on camera. Our emotions influence how we want to present a picture or tell a story. These are the things that guide us through the editing process.