How to Edit Photos

As someone who runs a business creating, sharing, and essentially selling things and ideas on the internet… photos are pretty important! I want my content to be as colorful, clear, and clean as possible. I don’t want anything to come off as fake or misleading – but no one wants to look at dull, unappealing photos.

I will be sharing the apps and tools that I use below. But first, I want to talk about some key words and the order that I would edit them in:

1. Exposure: This is used to brighten and whiten the entire photo. You have to be careful with this, most photos can only be exposed by a tiny bit. But, that tiny bit often helps a lot and helps the other edits.
2. Shadows: This is an excellent tool which brightens (quite well) any shadows in your photos. You just have to be careful because if you use this too much in a really dark photo, it is going to come out grainy and look fake.
3. Dehaze: This is the single most important editing tool (in my opinion). This is how I get such deep and contrasted colors and dimensions in my photos (especially outdoor photos).
4. Vibrance: There are several different color enhancing tools, but the only one I typically change is the vibrance. This simply enhances the natural colors in your photo, instead of completely changing them.
5. Contrast: This is exactly what it should like. It enhances the contrast between the darks and lights in your photo.
6. Whites or Blacks: This is two separate editing tools, but you usually only need one or the other. Obviously, you can play with both and decide what you like. However, typically if I need to brighten a photo at the end, I enhance the whites. Whereas, if I need to darken some places I decrease the blacks.

The Best Free Photo Editing Apps

1. For beginners, I would start with PS Express (which is a free Photo Shop app). Also, the app has an “auto” button which will instantly adjust all of the tools at once to what they think your photo needs. I will usually hit the button, but then still change some of the features myself.
2. As you get a bit more advanced, you might want to play with the free Lightroom CC app. Lightroom CC has all of the same features as PS Express, plus a few additional ones. It also has the “Auto” key.

Full disclosure: At this point, I actually pay for full access to the Lightroom CC app, and I use it on my desktop so that I can see the photos better and can edit individual parts a single photo with a brush stroke.

Katie chats

I hope you enjoyed my post on “How to Edit Photos.” Let me know if you have any questions or problems! This can actually become very addicting and satisfying, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. LOL 🙂 Follow me on Instagram to view all of my photos and keep up with my adventures!

I’m just over here counting down the days until the end of the semester – because that’s the day James and I head to a much needed getaway in Jamaica for Christmas. I know you’re probably thinking “geez, you were just in the Caribbean – you don’t need a vacation lady.” And that could be arguable – but James and I have had very little time to ourselves throughout the last few months, so we are really looking forward to spending some time together! And of course, I will be capturing and sharing the highlights of the trip on Instagram and Wine and Weekends (we are getting scuba certified!!!) – so stay tuned!

Until next time,

Read More: Why the Island of St. Martin should be your Next Vacation

Xo