Post-processing is the key to enhanacing photos. Your photo may look great at first glance, but learning some post-processing techniques can make your awesome photos so much better.

Here are some editing tips to improve your photographs, specially chosen for content creators.

Before you start… shoot in Raw

Although you can vastly improve your images in the post-processing stage, having strong material to begin with helps.
Taking your photos in RAW is essential for getting the sharpest picture possible. It also makes editing your photos a lot easier as RAW supports a lot of photo editing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom.

Which software should you use?

There are plenty of photo editing software available, one of the best known is a program called Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is so well known that the term ‘photoshopping’ has become a common expression to describe photo editing. It is an advanced program that allows you to completely overhaul any image in a matter of minutes!

Photoshop also can work jointly with another program called Lightroom. Lightroom is for photo adjustments, Photoshop is for photo manipulation. 

Free alternatives such as GIMP, paint.net, PhotoScape X amongst many others,  but they may lack a few features.

Be organised

After shooting for a full day, you’ll probably have hundreds of photos to choose from. Instead of importing everything from your camera to your hard drive, you should try picking and choosing your favourite snaps and storing them within Lightroom. Lightroom’s interface will display all of your photos in an organised manner, saving time on locating that one photo that you’ve been dying to edit.

Crop and Straighten

Sometimes photobombers or other unexpected obstacles ruin your photo.  This can quickly and easily be fixed with the cropping tool. This tool allows you to get rid of unwanted areas in an image. The cropping tool also allows you to change the aspect ratio from landscape to portrait or even square. Be careful of cropping too much as you can lose picture quality.

It’s also important to straighten your horizon. A slightly skewed picture is unflattering and is easy to spot. This can be fixed by selecting the ‘straighten’ option when using the cropping tool.

Brightness and contrast

Not all photos come out as expected, sometimes the picture can be too dark or overly exposed. Thankfully both Lightroom and Photoshop include tools that can fix that. By moving the brightness and contrast sliders within the software you are using, you will be able to correct exposure levels easily.

Making the colours pop

There’s nothing wrong with a natural-looking image but adding some colour can make your photos stand out. Most photo editing software have basic vibrance and saturation settings. Adjusting these settings creatively can really make the image pop with colour.

Use presets

Manually making basic adjustments on each photo can take time, but once you are happy with your adjustments to a photo, you can then save the settings as a preset and apply it to another set of photos, saving plenty of time in the process for editting other photos. 

Dodge and Burn

These tools are used to darken or lighten specific areas of your photo which can help give your image more contrast. ‘Dodge’ lightens your photo and ‘burn’ darkens it. These tools are controlled with a brush, giving you full control with your mouse. Experiment to see what works for you.

Use the healing brush and clone stamps

Got a spot on your cheek? Photo editing software have tools that allow you to erase unwanted elements easily. By using either the healing brush or clone stamp, you’ll be able to eliminate any unflattering details with a click of a button. These tools work by replicating a specific area of a photo and applying it to another position. Both tools have the same function but are controlled differently. For basic alterations, you might find it easier to stick with the healing brush.

Make sharp images sharper

When a photo is focused on a specific object, sharpening helps emphasize specific details of a photo. This feature is particularly useful if it’s a macro shot. Lightroom’s sharpening controls are very intuitive and simple to use. Under the ‘Detail’ tab, you’ll find everything you need to help sharpen your image.

These are just a few simple editing tips to improve your photos, there are many more techniques out there to discover. For example, Adobe has many tutorials that can teach you new and exciting features that you may not know. Websites like Skillshare also provide online courses in photo editing as well as photography in general.

We encourage you to reach out to fellow photographers and creators on Buzzkiki to learn from each other and exchange ideas and concepts for new projects.