5 Errors with Editing Photos to Avoid for Your Website

Did you know that using images on your website can help you build your brand’s credibility? Photos are also great for customer engagement (and they make your website look great).

When you’re using your own photos or stock photos, you may decide that you want to make a few edits. Editing website photos isn’t as easy as people make it look.

Keep reading to learn a few common errors with editing photos so you can avoid them.

1. Too Many Lighting “Fixes”

Many newbies to photo editing will see that a photo is too dark and immediately open up the exposure, brightness, and contrast tools on their favorite photo editing app.

While these tools can be useful, it’s common for people to overdo it when they’re not used to using them. This results in images that look overexposed and “blown out.”

Use the sliders slowly and remember that less is often more. If a photo is already overexposed, you aren’t helping it by upping the contrast. If it’s underexposed, upping the exposure too much can make it look harsh or grainy.

2. Aggressive Use Of The Saturation Slider

Speaking of overusing sliders, don’t make this common mistake. Never get too overzealous with the saturation slider.

Brighter and more vibrant images are better, right? Well, not always. Yes, a small saturation boost can be great when you’re trying to enhance personal photos or free stock images, but if you oversaturate the photo, it will look cartoonish and the quality will look lower.

Be conservative with the saturation slider. Play with the “vibrance” slider instead to achieve a good color balance.

3. Sizing Up Low-Quality Images

So the image that you want to use isn’t large enough. Now what? Can’t you just size it up to make it suit your needs?

This depends on the photo. Most of the time, editing the photo size by sizing up a photo that isn’t already high-quality will make it look blurry and unprofessional. You’ll be able to see more individual pixels.

Look for the largest version of a photo that you can find and size down from there if it’s possible to do so. This will help you retain the quality of the image. Stretching the image is never a good idea.

4. Over-Blurring

So you’re using photos of models (or yourself) on your website. It’s normal to want to do some touch-ups to make the photos look perfect, but make sure that you don’t overdo it. Editing photo details away is never the right answer.

In the age of free photo editing tools, many people have discovered how easy it is to blur and smooth out “imperfections” on faces and bodies. Overdoing it is obvious and unappealing to viewers. Smoothed sections of a photo stand out.

Make sure that the photos still show skin texture if you want them to retain their quality.

5. Not Learning About Tools

Sure, you can use basic sliders if you don’t edit photos often, but it will benefit you to learn about all of the other tools that even the most basic editing apps have to offer.

Learn how to use the curves tool and how to adjust colors and shadows with the HSL tool and the toning tool. These are simple tools that are user-friendly but can still help you make your photos pop.

By learning to use a few photo editing tools, you can also learn to make your own filter presets.