7 Steps to Better Photo Editing

Hello my friend!

Photo editing is an important part of the photography process, that can take your photos to the next level when done right.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ve put together 7 tips to help improve your photo editing. To better illustrate everything, we’ll be editing a photo together.

This is the image I’ve chosen for today’s edit:

💭 Keep in mind that photography is a subjective art form. This is my way of editing, but there are loads of different ways to achieve various looks.

I use Zoner Photo Studio X to edit my photos, but the steps we’ll be covering can be applied to pretty much all desktop-based software.

👇️ At the end of this newsletter, you’ll find images showing the outcome of each of the steps we’ll be going through.

The Basics

Before really jumping into the editing process, it’s good to get some of the basics out of the way. Two things that I always apply in the beginning are:

• Camera & lens profiles for the photo

  → These profiles fix optical corrections and chromatic aberration in just a few clicks. If you haven’t got them in your editing software, you can download them here.

  
  

• Straightening the horizon

  → If needed, make sure to straighten the horizon right away. It’s a super easy way to make your photos more appealing.

  
  

💭 These two steps are mainly necessary for camera photos, and not relevant for drone photos.

The Tone Curve

The tone curve represents all of the tones in your image. The line in the tone curve starts with shadows on the left, midtones in the middle and ends with highlights on the right.

I mainly use the tone curve to increase the contrast in a photo. This can be done by giving the tone curve a subtle s-curve, as shown in the image below. In practice, this is possible since you are darkening the shadows (the left part) and brightening the already bright parts (the right side).

The more you lower the left part of the line and increase the right, the more contrast you’ll create in your image.

For this image, I went for a very subtle s-curve as you can see.

Exposure & White Balance

This is where the magic starts. Before beginning an edit, ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the image.

For me personally, I like when my images have some contrast while still maintaining a soft and natural look. With this in mind, I adjust the settings.

Here are some quick thoughts regarding the settings shown in the image below:

Exposure → I lowered this slider with -0.2 on purpose to better enhance the radial filters that we’ll be adding later.

White point → increasing the White point slightly is a useful way of brightening parts of an image and creating more contrast.

Lights → lowered this slider to maintain a soft and balanced look.

Shadows → I usually prefer increasing the Shadows slider instead of the Black point slider, as it in my opinion creates too much of a faded look.

Colour Shift & Split Toning

The Colour Shift tools are great for increasing, decreasing and modifying the colours of an image.

If you’re unsure about what you should do with these sliders, ask yourself once again what you want to accomplish with the image.

In this case, I just wanted to boost the colours of the trees and decrease the colour of the water slightly. I didn’t want the water to be too distracting.

With this in mind, I increased some colours and decreased others, as shown in the image below.

💭 Sometimes, less is more. As you can see, I didn’t even touch the Hue-sliders. Only do the changes that you find truly necessary.

In most softwares, there are also split toning tools that look something like this:

While I didn’t use it for this specific image, it’s a really great tool to have at times. This tool lets you separately adjust the tones of the entire image (Master), shadows and lights.

Gradient Filters

Gradient filters are fantastic when you want to make adjustments to parts of an image.

In this case, I wanted to darken all corners except the top left. This was done in order to better enhance the natural light source, which came from that direction.

I set each gradient filter to -0.3 Exposure and placed them in each corner.

This is just one example of when gradient filters come in handy. They can also be used to increase exposure, boost colours etc.

Radial Filters

When you want to make local adjustments to an area that’s located in the central parts of an image, this is your go-to tool. Radial filters also work well if you want the adjustment to blend in smoothly with the non-selected areas.

For this image, I added one big radial filter with +0.2 exposure starting from the top left corner to enhance the natural light source. Since I previously had decreased the overall exposure with -0.2, I could add another 0.2 this time without making the image too bright.

In addition, I also added a small radial filter on the house with a +0.1 exposure to naturally guide the attention of the viewer to this part of the photo even more.

The Finishing Touches

Before exporting your photo, take a final look and see if there is anything else you think should be changed. Perhaps some extra sharpness or clarity can be added.

When you feel done, click export and save the file!

The Final Result

Here’s an illustration of what each of the changes did to the image. Each step led to subtle changes, while still having a quite significant impact.

I hope you’ve found this newsletter useful. If you’ve got any questions regarding photo editing - feel free to send me a message and I’ll get back to you.

All the best,

Kevin