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6 Photography Editing Techniques To Make A Photo Look Different

There are some people who prefer not to make any dramatic changes to their images and that is fine. On the other hand, some people look at their photos in the same way as an artist paints a piece of art. So, manipulating a photo is something they will want to do. Whatever your personal preference is will be up to you. What is for certain is that editing software gives a whole world of opportunity. So here are 6 ideas for ways to edit your photos to give it completely different looks.

Crop

One of the quickest and easiest ways to transform an image is by simply cropping it differently. The great thing about digital photography is that you can crop as much as you want and always return to the previous version. So, don’t be afraid to give it a try and keep in mind that it doesn’t always have to be in a 4:3 ratio. For example, cropping in a panoramic ratio can make a photo look very different.

If you are using Lightroom, simply press “R” on your keyboard and you’ll be able to start trying out different crops. A useful tip to know is that when you have pressed “R” if you then press “O” you can toggle through different overlays (i.e. rule of thirds, golden ratio etc).

Black & white

Another quick but dramatic change to a photo can be made by switching the photo to monochrome (i.e. black and white). You will need to adjust some of the settings after converting to black and white as the image might look a little flat. Black and white images generally work best if there is some contrast in the shot so you may find boosting these will give a more pleasing result. Keep in mind that some images will work better in black and white than others but there is no harm in simply trying it out. You can always revert back to the previous colour version.

Low saturation

There are lots of different ways in which you can treat a photo. Most photographers tend to boost saturation and vibrancy as RAW files will generally be more muted in colours. So, boosting saturation will often give a pleasing result. But there are times when reducing the saturation for a more muted look will look great. This works well in shots where you have flat colours like landscapes on a cloudy day. Don’t pull the sliders all the way to the left as this will basically make your photo monochrome.

You can also combine (or instead) of this “global” saturation and vibrancy, use the sliders in the “HSL” section in Lightroom to selectively add or remove saturation from specific colours. Play around and see what you can come up with.

Hue

These sliders in editing software basically move a colour tone from one to another. For example, the Blue slider can make blues look purple or aqua at either end of the slider. While this might seem useless as most of the time these extremes make photos look unrealistic, sometimes a little bit of movement can really help an image.

Say for example you have a scene with yellow, dried grass. Moving the yellow slider to the right will make the grass appear greener. But keep in mind that if other parts of your image also have yellows in it, it will also make them green. You can use these sliders to make some subtle (or more dramatic) changes to your images.

An example of how using the Hue sliders can change an image. Here I’ve added more green to the grass areas.

Vignettes

Vignettes are another easy and quick way to add a little something extra to a photo. While the change won’t be dramatic with vignettes, it will still make a photo look different. Vignettes are great for occasions when you want to bring more focus on the subject in the centre of the shot. For example, in portrait photography, vignettes can work really nicely.

The important thing when using vignettes is subtlety. I have often seen examples of really dark vignettes of almost black, which for me seem to take away the focus from the subject. So my advice would be to just add a small amount, but ultimately it will be down to you and your desired effect.

Sky replacement

Replacing skies in photos isn’t something new. Luminar have had the function for a number of years. Now Photoshop has also introduced it to their interface. Obviously changing sky has always been possible in Photoshop, but the new automated function does make things a lot easier. Like any kind of editing, whether you are OK with replacing a sky will come down to your personal preference and the purpose of the photo.

If it’s just for personal use, then there’s no issue about replacing a sky. But for example, if you want to enter the photo into a competition you will find that replacing a sky isn’t allowed. But what the sky replacement technique does give you is a completely new way to show a photo.

There is no harm in trying it out. Make sure you have an image open in Photoshop then click Edit => Sky Replacement. It is self-explanatory from that point onwards.

Editing is an important part of the photography process. While like most photographers I would advocate that you get as much correct when taking a photo, there is nothing wrong with using editing techniques to achieve the desired effect. Photography is after all an art and an expression of your creativity. At the very least you can play around with the techniques above to see what you can come up with.

5 Post Productions Checks To Run On Your Images

Editing your images effectively is one of the most critical parts of the whole photography process. The reality is that every single image will benefit from some level of editing even if it’s as simple as just cropping or straightening it. Whether you decide to edit your photos or not will come down to personal preference. But there are certain things that regardless of personal taste you need to ensure you fix in photos. So here are 5 checks that you should run on every photo.

White balance

Unless you set your white balance while you are taking a photo, the chances are that it isn’t going to be correct. Which means having to fix or tweak it in post-production. The good news is that if you have taken your photos in RAW format then tweaking the white balance will be really easy. You can either do this manually by moving the sliders or you can use the presets that cameras come with (i.e. tungsten, cloudy etc). These presets will automatically try to tweak the white balance to match the scene. But they are not always 100% accurate and you may find that the colour doesn’t look right.

The key to tweaking the white balance is to aim for a natural look or in other words how your eyes viewed the scene. Be especially aware of skin tones that may look overly orange if the white balance is too warm for example.

The image on the left without the WB corrected. The image on the right looks more natural and how the eyes would see the scene.

Remove dust

The longer you have had your camera and the more you use it, the more dust is likely to appear in your photos. You can of course reduce this by regularly cleaning your camera and lenses. But you will always find that there may be specks of dust that appear in your images. One of the most prominent places this shows up on are blue skies. The only way to check and know for sure is to zoom into your photos at 100% view and check the image all over. If you find dust particles you can then spot remove them in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Converging lines

A common problem that occurs whenever you photograph buildings (or anything vertical) is something called converging lines. You will no doubt have seen the effect in your photos. This is when you take a photo of two parallel lines like the two sides of a building and they seem to get closer together near the top. This can make the buildings look like they are about to fall backwards and is especially noticeable if you tilt your camera up and when using a wide-angle lens. There are several ways that you can avoid this happening when you are taking the photo without investing in an expensive tilt and shift lens. Like stepping further back so that your camera is not tilted up as much. Or you can try to get higher so that you are more straight on with the building you are photographing.

But sometimes none of these options are possible so you will need to fix the issue when editing your image. Lightroom makes this fairly easy with an automated correction section. It doesn’t always work perfectly for all images but most of the time it will straighten your image. If it doesn’t you will need to manually correct the perspective of the image in Lightroom or Photoshop.

You can see how the verticle lines in the image on the left look like they are falling backwards. The image on the right is with correction added.

Chromatic aberration

Also known as colour fringing, chromatic aberration is a common problem that occurs because of lenses. The optics of a lens mean that sometimes when light enters it is diffracted or bent and does not return to combine correctly when it hits the sensor. Chromatic aberration usually occurs in high contrast scenes and especially in areas where there are darker edges against a bright background. For example, a tree against a bright sky at sunrise may cause the edges of branches to show chromatic aberration. You needn’t fret about chromatic aberration as it is pretty easy to fix in Lightroom or Photoshop if you shoot in RAW. All you need to do is to tick the box to remove chromatic aberration and Lightroom will do the rest. But like anything sometimes it might not work perfectly and so you need to manually remove chromatic aberration in Photoshop.

NOTE: Check out this post for the easy way to remove chromatic aberration in photoshop.

Lens correction

You may have noticed that when looking at your images in Lightroom they suffer from certain issues such as distortion, vignetting and as discussed above chromatic aberration. These could be because of imperfections that occur in every camera and lens. A few years ago Adobe realised that with the array of lenses on offer there needed to be lens-specific corrections. Essentially these corrections look to fix the issues mentioned above that arise by simply selecting the right lens profile for an image. The unique formula created by Adobe offsets these optical issues. Whilst it’s very reliable and works perfectly most of the time, there are times that it may not and you may need to tweak things manually. But it’s worth making sure you select your lens profile for every image (you can also do this automatically when importing images) to correct the issues above.

The image on the left is without lens correction. Notice the vignettes in the corners.

These simple checks are something that you should do on every image not only to ensure that your images look their best but also because they are essential for when photos are printed. Any of these issues will look pretty undesirable on a finished photo. So, spend a bit of time checking and correcting your images.

5 Ways To Ensure You Spend More Time Shooting Rather Than Editing

Unless you are one of those rare breeds of photographers who actually enjoy sitting in front of a monitor for hours editing your photos then no doubt you would rather be outside shooting. For me personally one of the positives that has come out of being in lockdown is being able to catch up with my editing. But it has also confirmed how much I despair at this part of the photography process. If you are like me and prefer to limit your editing time then here are 5 ways to ensure you make your photography process more efficient. Meaning, less time in front of a monitor and more time taking photos.

Take fewer photos

This doesn’t mean that you should photograph less, but rather to be more selective about your shots. When I first began on my photography journey I, like many other beginners felt that the more photos I took the better the chance of a great photo. But the problem with this is that firstly you don’t spend as much time thinking and analyzing your shot before taking it. So you end up with a lot of mediocre shots rather than a few great ones. But also, taking lots of photos means, lots of time spent going through them. Don’t get me wrong sometimes you need to take lots of shots. Like for example if you are photographing events or sport. But in a landscape scene, a few shots will be more than enough.

Get it right first time

A common phrase that I hear from beginners on my photography workshop is “I’ll fix that later in Lightroom”. You should always aim to get as much of the photo correct at the time of actually taking the photo. Not only will this give you the best quality photo but it will also allow you to make tweaks there and then. For example, if your photo needs to be cropped slightly on one side, instead of thinking you can do this in post-production see if you can move slightly or zoom in to crop it. Or when you are taking a shot that requires filters, use them. Don’t be lazy and just think I’ll add a gradient in Lightroom.

Don’t get me wrong there are times when there is no other option and you have to fix something in post-processing. But the more you can get right in the camera means the less time you will have to “fix” things in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Build an efficient workflow

There is no getting around the fact that every photo will still require some level of editing. So it’s important to set up an efficient workflow for yourself that can speed up your editing process. How you edit will come down to your own preferences. But here are some things that could help you make your workflow faster.

Be ruthless in your editing. Rather than trying to edit every photo, go through your collection a couple of times and only select the strongest shots (and delete the ones that are blurred).
Use the “sync” or “copy from previous” function in Lightroom. There are some great functions in Lightroom that allow you to bulk edit multiple photos by pasting your edits from other photos. So if you have a set of photos that are all taken at the same location around the same time, the chances are that the required edits will be the same.
Create presets. You can also create unlimited presets that are based on your own editing preferences and use them to quickly get the look you want. Again this will depend on your type of photography but it’s something that can really help you speed up your editing.
Use an editing accessory such as a tablet or a controller to give you more control. For example, something like TourBox allows you to build your own set of shortcuts on the controller and it makes adjusting sliders much easier than using a mouse.

The TourBox controller makes editing much quicker and easier

Set yourself editing time

One of my biggest challenges is editing fast enough to avoid a backlog of images piling up. At one point I had over 10,000 images to edit through spanning a few years. Thankfully I’m now caught up with these and I have promised myself I’ll avoid it happening again. One way that I found that I was able to get through my editing was by setting myself specific times for this. So over a week I would set myself specific days and dedicate 3 – 4 hours to just edit. Because it wasn’t all day, every day, I found it easier to get through and I was able to still have days away from the computer. So if you struggle to edit through big collections, breaking it down into chunks like this might help.

Get someone else to do it

If money is no object or you are too busy to be able to edit the shots yourself you can always hire someone to do the editing for you. This is something that portrait, wedding and even property photographers often take advantage of. There are plenty of companies out there that offer a variety of editing services at different costs. So if you really don’t want to edit the photos yourself, this is another solution that you could consider.

Editing is an essential part of the photography process but also one that most photographers would happily forego if they could. By using the tips above you will be able to speed up your editing which means you will be able to spend more time taking photos.

Editing Secrets Revealed!: Five Lightroom Tricks

Adobe Lightroom is one of the most widely used software programs out there. When it comes to editing your digital photos it’s extremely difficult to beat Lightroom when it comes to ease of use, versatility, and powerful post processing tools. It’s safe to say that most of you reading this likely have had some experience using Lightroom but do you know about some of the hidden capabilities of the software? Well, maybe I shouldn’t say hidden. Perhaps “lesser known” is a better way for my point to be phrased.

In this article, we’re going to show you five lesser known tricks to be found in Adobe Lightroom. You might even wonder how you’ve managed without them for so long!

#1: Direct Histogram Adjustments

You know how to adjust exposure using the adjustment sliders in Lightroom but did you know that you can make exposure adjustments directly to the histogram?

Yeah, really! Not only that, but you can work with the blacks, shadows, and highlights independently. To do it, simply hover over different areas of the histogram and pay attention to the bottom left corner of the histogram. This tells you which area of the histogram you will be adjustment. At the far left is the blacks region…

And to the far right will be the whites region.

To adjust an area, click on it and hold as you drag left or right on the histogram.

In the middle areas you will have shadows highlights and overall exposure. All independently adjustable in the exact same way.

#2 Visualizing Spots in Clone/Heal Mode

The clone and healing tools are a great way to remove unsightly dust and dirt specks that show up on your finished digital photo. It’s easy to just make some of those things go away with a click or two.

Did you know that there’s a super easy way to make removing those spots a lot more precise? It’s aptly called the “visualize spots” mode and to access it click…you guessed it, the visualize spots box at the bottom of the view window when in clone/heal mode. You can also use keyboard shortcut (A).

Your image is instantly converted to a black and white relief. Spots show up in white.

You can control the sensitivity of the spot revelation by using the slider.

#3 Sharpening Mask

Don’t introduce unwanted noise by sharpening your entire photo! There’s a smarter way and it’s by using the masking slider when sharpening your images in Lightroom.

Holding down the ‘Alt’ key(Option key on Mac) while adjusting the masking slider sensitivity will convert the image to a black and white relief similar to the visualize spots mode from earlier.

Now it’s just a matter of healing or cloning out the spots!

#4 Developing Video

For some, the downside of Lightroom is that it doesn’t work well with video editing. Video isn’t supported in the Develop Module so you have to rely on quick develop settings and presets to process any of your video files. Or do you? There is in fact a work around to help you edit your videos more precisely in Lightroom. First, make an image capture from your video.

Then make any adjustments to that image capture just as you would a normal photo. When finished, go back to the Library module. Then hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key(Command on Mac) and be sure both your edited image capture AND the video thumbnail are selected.

Now, click on ‘Sync Settings’

A dialog box will appear showing the available settings which can be synced. Make your selections and click ‘OK’. And boom! You’ve just developed your video.

#5 Custom Name Plate

This last trick is possibly the easiest…and the most arbitrary. You can customize the “name plate” in Lightroom along with a couple other things. The name plate is that little bit of text in the upper left hand corner of the view window.

Here’s how to change it. Simply right click on the name plate and choose ‘Edit identity plate’ from the drop down.

This will open the identity plate edit dialog box.

Select ‘Personalize’ from the dropdown at the top left.

Now change the font color, style, and size to whatever you want! You can even upload a custom logo image form here as well!

Final Thoughts…

Lightroom, as powerful as it is, offers some hidden gems if you just know where and how to find them. The secrets of Lightroom aren’t limited to just the ones we’ve shown here! Have your own tricks that you’d like to share with the class? Post them in the comments below!