Did you know that there are over 150,000 professional photographers in the USA today?
Professionals make a great living out of doing what they love: taking pictures and making them look great in post-production.
You may love taking pictures, but have not yet learned editing skills. What can you do to make a great picture look extraordinary?
Why not take a look at some simple but very effective photo editing tips. It might surprise you what you can do with a few keystrokes!
1. Use Black and White Filters
Converting a color image to black and white can instill fear into many photographers. Any imperfections in the original photograph may be magnified in the black and white version. Unkind lighting may be magnified as it is not hidden amongst a larger number of colors.
However, converting to black and white image can have major advantages. For many, it adds rustic charm and can add depth and character.
On other occasions, you can use this conversion process to cover over-exposed images. The excess white in an over-exposed color photo may blend in well in an image that is essentially made up of just white and black
Play around with black and white filters. It can help you to cover mistakes, or add grace and elegance to an already classy shot.
2. Vibrance and Saturation Sliders – What Do They Do?
When you first use vibrance and saturation, you may feel that they are very similar. However, beware! Their intended use is very different.
Use the saturation slider of all the colors in the shot. This can add a real richness to the image and cause the images to pop out. However, like most settings in image processing software, it is very easy to get carried away. Play around with it, but apply it minimally when making final settings.
Vibrance, however, looks to increase the value of muted colors in the image. It leaves saturated colors untouched. Muted colors are often found in skin tones, so it is important to use this setting carefully when working with human portrait shots.
3. Desaturation Tools
From saturation to de-saturation. Although saturation can add a richness to an image, when starting as a beginner you may not be aware that de-saturation can also be valuable.
If you are editing a shot of a beautiful garden, you may at first be impressed with the rich greens in the lawn, leaves, and bushes. However, this amount and intensity of green may overcrowd your image and its subject. Desaturating these areas will allow your main goal, your subject, to stand out.
Remember that when editing photos, a simple image is most often the one that fulfills its purpose.
4. Remove Unwanted Shadows
Lighting is often an ongoing challenge for photographers. If the shoot will take place outside, such as for a wedding, it can be difficult to predict weather conditions.
Ideally, you will want to have a consistent source of light pointing at the subject or bounced toward them. However, this may not be desirable for the subject or easy to do without multiple assistants.
In some cases, you will simply have to work to remove shadows in post-production. You can use Lightrooms Adjustment brush to accomplish this.
After some practice, you will find that you can easily remove shadows from images without leaving telltale signs.
5. Color Improvements
Colour settings can be very intimidating to the new photographer. After all, there are many settings, and all combine to produce different effects. It can be difficult to find a combination that will achieve the goal that you are looking for.
A good first step is to visualize what you want the finalized edited image to look like. What or who is the subject? How should they stand out? What mood are you trying to create in the image?
You may increase the yellow to cause the leaves in a fall shot to stand out, however, is there blue sky behind that could be encouraged to stand out and add contrast and vibrance.
You could even edit multiple editions of the same phot in order to experiment with reaching different goals. This way you can learn how color settings can complement the same image in different ways.
6. Use Histogram In Lightroom
The histogram is a powerful tool in Lightroom that helps you to identify clipped highlights or shadows. From this information, you can adjust your exposure and contrast settings. It can even tell you the quality of the exposure in your initial shot.
Histogram is a truly powerful tool, you can learn more from this guide which shows you how to use histogram in Lightroom.
7. Create Efficient Workflows
As you learn how to use the tools available in Lightroom, you will see that a great many changes can be made to images. Then comes another problem: Time.
As you learn how to use tools, the potential for work on each image grows. This can mean that you spend hours perfecting each image. This might be pleasurable but not professional. If you are a professional photographer it can cost you money.
Learning to create productive workflows, or basic steps that you take with each photo can help you to remain disciplined. Further, whether working on PC or Apple devices, learning the most effective keyboard shortcuts can help you to save more time.
As you save time on each image, you are actually creating time that you can spend learning to use other features of Lightroom.
Photo Editing Tips and Much More
Just some small edits can make the difference between a photo that looks amateur and one that looks truly professional. Applying these photo editing tips could help you to take the first steps in your professional photography career.
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