How to Edit Your Photos Like a Photographer : Essential Photoshop & Lightroom Tips from professional photographer

Photography is an art form, and much of the magic happens after the shutter is pressed. Editing your photos can transform them from good to stunning, and with the right tools and techniques, you can achieve professional-quality results. If you’re a photographer looking to up your game or a beginner exploring the world of photo editing, learning how to edit like a pro with Photoshop and Lightroom is essential.

In this article, we’ll walk you through some of the most effective techniques to edit photos, whether you're shooting portraits, landscapes, or even action shots from a surfing or swimming photoshoot. Along the way, we’ll explore essential editing tools, tips, and settings in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to help you enhance your images with ease.

1. Getting Started: Understanding the Basics of Editing

Before diving into advanced editing techniques, it’s crucial to understand the basics of photo editing. Both Photoshop and Lightroom are powerful programs, but they serve different purposes. Lightroom is perfect for bulk editing, organising photos, and making global adjustments, while Photoshop is ideal for more intricate retouching and manipulations.

Lightroom allows you to make adjustments like exposure, white balance, contrast, and more in one easy-to-use interface. It’s perfect for landscape photography, travel shoots, portrait photography, and more. Photoshop, on the other hand, is where you can perform detailed retouching, composites, and advanced image manipulations, making it ideal for fashion, beauty, commercial photography, and special effects.

To get the best out of these programs, it’s crucial to shoot in RAW format. RAW files contain more data than JPEGs, giving you more flexibility when editing, especially when adjusting highlights, shadows, or white balance.

2. Mastering Lightroom for Quick and Efficient Edits

Lightroom is often the first step in the editing process, where you can perform basic colour corrections and adjustments. Here’s how to make the most of Lightroom's powerful tools:

Exposure and Contrast Adjustments

When you open your image in Lightroom, start with the Basic Panel. The first thing you want to do is adjust the exposure to make sure the image is correctly exposed. If the image is too dark or bright, the exposure slider will help you fix this. Next, adjust the contrast to make your image pop. A slight increase in contrast can add depth, especially in landscape and outdoor photoshoots.

White Balance Correction

Getting the white balance right is crucial for realistic colour tones in your photos. Use the Temperature and Tint sliders in Lightroom to adjust the warmth or coolness of the image. For outdoor photoshoots, natural light can sometimes lead to unwanted colour casts. Adjusting the white balance ensures that skin tones in portraits look natural, and the colours in your landscape shots are true to life.

Clarity and Texture Enhancements

For adding texture and bringing out details, use the Clarity slider. This is especially useful for action shots, like swimwear photography or fitness photoshoots, where the details in clothing, muscles, or water splashes need to be highlighted. The Texture slider works similarly, enhancing the fine details of a subject’s skin or fabric texture without making it look over-processed.

Tone Curve

The Tone Curve in Lightroom is a powerful tool for adjusting the shadows, midtones, and highlights of your image. It allows for precise control of contrast, giving your photos a more dynamic and polished look. Play around with this tool to add depth to portrait photography or brighten up the shadows in dark environments for indoor photoshoots.

3. Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Professional Retouching

Once you’ve made global adjustments in Lightroom, it’s time to move on to Photoshop for more advanced editing and retouching. Here are a few essential techniques you can apply in Photoshop:

Skin Retouching

In portrait photography, skin retouching is often necessary to give your subject a polished yet natural look. One of the most common techniques for skin smoothing is the frequency separation method. This separates the texture of the skin from the colour and tone, allowing you to smooth out imperfections without losing the natural texture of the skin.

To achieve flawless skin, use the Healing Brush Tool or the Spot Healing Brush Tool to remove blemishes, acne, or minor skin imperfections. Be sure to work subtly, as over-editing can make the skin appear unnaturally smooth.

Enhancing Eyes and Teeth

Brightening the eyes and teeth can make a significant difference in portrait and fashion photography. Use the Dodge Tool to lighten the whites of the eyes and teeth, making them look brighter and more vibrant. Be cautious not to overdo it – subtlety is key to maintaining a natural look.

Colour Grading for Mood and Tone

Colour grading is a powerful way to create a specific mood in your images. In Photoshop, you can adjust the Hue/Saturation and Selective Colour to give your photos a distinct feel. For swimwear photography, you may want to enhance the vibrant blues and greens of the ocean, while in fashion photography, you might adjust the colours to create a more stylish, moody atmosphere. Playing with Split Toning can also help achieve unique effects in your photos.

Background Removal and Substitution

Sometimes, the background may not match the tone or feel of the photoshoot. Photoshop allows you to easily remove or replace backgrounds with the Quick Selection Tool or Pen Tool. This is particularly useful in fashion and commercial photography, where clean, seamless backgrounds often help the subject stand out more.

4. Creative Editing Tips for Unique Effects

Adding creative edits can elevate your photos from ordinary to extraordinary. Here are some creative ideas for editing:

Vignetting

A subtle vignette can help focus attention on the subject of your image, especially in portrait photography. In Lightroom, you can apply a vignette by adjusting the Post-Crop Vignetting slider under the Effects panel. This is a great tool for emphasising your subject while keeping the background less distracting.

Creating Dramatic Lighting with Dodging and Burning

Dodging and burning are classic techniques in photo editing, used to add contrast and depth. The Dodge Tool lightens specific areas of the image, while the Burn Tool darkens areas to enhance shadows. Use these tools to add a three-dimensional effect to your photos, making the subject “pop” against the background.

5. Final Touches: Sharpening and Exporting Your Photos

Once you’ve finished editing your photo, it’s time to sharpen it and prepare it for export. In Lightroom, use the Detail panel to sharpen your image. Be careful not to over-sharpen, as this can introduce noise and make your image look unnatural.

In Photoshop, you can sharpen images by using the Unsharp Mask or the High Pass Filter. Be sure to adjust the settings based on the resolution of your image. Higher-resolution images require less sharpening.

After you’ve applied the final touches, you can export your photos in the desired format. For web use, export your images as JPEGs with a quality setting of around 80%. For print, use TIFF or PNG formats for the best quality.

Conclusion

Editing photos like a pro requires practice, patience, and a good understanding of the tools at your disposal. With Lightroom for global adjustments and Photoshop for advanced retouching, you can turn any photo into a masterpiece. Whether you're working on fashion shoots, fitness photography, portrait sessions, or landscape photography, these techniques will help you achieve professional-level results.

To go one step further

Advanced Tips and Techniques

Photography editing is an essential skill for any photographer, whether you're a professional or an enthusiast. With the right tools and techniques, you can take your photos to the next level and make them visually stunning. In this article, we’ll cover advanced tips and techniques for editing photos using Photoshop and Lightroom, delving into topics like color management, fine retouching, presets, destructive vs. non-destructive editing, advanced compositing techniques, perspective corrections, and more. Whether you're shooting portraits, fashion, swimwear, or even large-scale events like sports competitions, mastering photo editing can elevate your work and make it stand out.

1. Color Management and ICC Profiles

When editing photos, managing colors across various devices is crucial for maintaining consistency. ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles play a key role in this process. These profiles ensure that the colors in your images appear the same on different screens and in print. For professional photographers, especially those working in portrait photography, fashion, or fine art, proper calibration of monitors is essential. This is where color space comes into play. Understanding and using the correct color profiles such as sRGB, AdobeRGB, or ProPhoto RGB ensures the colors you see in editing software are accurate when printed or viewed on various devices.

Additionally, always consider screen calibration. Without a calibrated monitor, colors in your images can appear more saturated or dull compared to their true appearance. Tools like X-Rite i1Display or Datacolor Spyder are great for ensuring that your monitor’s color output is accurate and consistent across your workflow.

2. Fine Retouching in Portrait Photography

Portrait photography requires precise editing, especially when it comes to fine retouching. While Lightroom is great for basic adjustments, Photoshop allows for more advanced retouching. Key areas for retouching include skin imperfections, stray hairs, and clothing details. Using tools like the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, and Frequency Separation, you can remove blemishes and achieve flawless skin without losing texture.

A commonly used technique is frequency separation, which separates the texture of the skin from the color and tone, making it easier to smooth out skin without blurring details. Similarly, tools like Dodge and Burn can help you add depth and definition to a model’s features, giving them a more dynamic and professional look.

3. Creating Custom Presets for Consistency

Presets are an incredibly efficient way to streamline your editing process, especially when working on large batches of photos or a specific project. Lightroom allows you to create custom presets tailored to your style, whether you're shooting fashion, swimwear, or family portraits. These presets can include settings for exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, and color grading.

Creating presets not only saves time but also helps maintain consistency across multiple images. For example, when shooting swimwear photography, you may develop a preset that enhances skin tones and highlights the natural light reflecting off the water. Applying this preset to all the photos from your shoot ensures that the final images have a cohesive, polished look.

4. Destructive vs. Non-Destructive Editing

Understanding the difference between destructive and non-destructive editing is essential for preserving your original images. In non-destructive editing, adjustments are made on separate layers or as metadata that doesn't alter the original image file. This allows for flexibility and easy reversal of changes.

Photoshop is great for non-destructive editing using adjustment layers and masks, meaning you can modify an image’s brightness, contrast, and other properties without permanently altering the original pixels. On the other hand, destructive editing refers to changes made directly to the image pixels, such as cropping or straightening an image. While this can be useful in certain cases, it’s important to always keep a copy of your original image to prevent irreversible changes.

5. Advanced Compositing Techniques

For photographers looking to create more complex images, compositing is an advanced technique that involves combining elements from multiple photos into one. This technique is commonly used in fashion photography, advertising, or fine art photography. The process involves precise selection, masking, and blending of various elements, like models, props, and backgrounds, to create a seamless final image.

To create effective composites in Photoshop, use tools like Layer Masks, Quick Selection Tool, and Content-Aware Fill. Additionally, pay close attention to lighting and shadows to ensure that all elements in your composite appear cohesive. Dodging and burning can help add depth to the composition, making it appear more realistic.

6. Perspective Corrections and Lens Distortion

When photographing architecture or landscape images, perspective correction becomes crucial. Wide-angle lenses often cause lens distortion, where straight lines appear to curve, especially near the edges of the image. Lightroom has a built-in lens correction feature that can automatically remove distortion based on the lens used. However, Photoshop offers more control over perspective correction through tools like the Perspective Warp and Transform features.

For portrait photography, maintaining correct proportions and perspective is key. Correcting the perspective can help ensure the subject's face or body looks natural and not skewed. Similarly, when shooting swimwear or fashion photography, you’ll want to adjust the perspective to ensure the model's figure looks flattering.

7. Exporting Optimized Images for the Web

Once your editing is complete, it's essential to export your images in the appropriate format for the web. Web optimization is critical for ensuring your images load quickly on websites, blogs, and social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook. In Lightroom, you can adjust export settings, such as resizing the image, setting the appropriate resolution (usually 72dpi for web), and choosing the file format (JPEG, PNG, etc.).

For eCommerce sites, product photography should be exported in high quality but with a smaller file size. You want your images to be sharp and clear but also optimized for fast loading times to improve the user experience.

8. Using AI Tools for Image Enhancement

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into photo editing software. AI-driven tools in Photoshop, such as Adobe Sensei, can automatically detect faces, adjust lighting, and even remove unwanted objects from your images. AI is also making its way into other editing tools like Topaz Labs, which offer software to reduce noise and upscale images with minimal loss of quality.

AI tools are especially helpful for photographers working under time constraints or those who need to process large batches of photos quickly, such as in event photography or sports photography.

9. Mobile Photography and Editing Apps

While traditional cameras dominate the photography world, mobile phones have become an increasingly important tool for capturing high-quality images. Editing photos on mobile devices is also an essential skill. Apps like Snapseed, VSCO, and Adobe Lightroom Mobile offer robust editing capabilities right at your fingertips.

For photographers on the go, mobile apps allow you to make quick adjustments to your photos, apply filters, crop images, and share them instantly on social media. Whether you’re shooting surf photography on the beach or taking portraits at a local event, these apps allow you to refine your photos without needing a computer.

10. Photography Plugins for Enhanced Workflow

There are numerous plugins available for both Photoshop and Lightroom that can take your editing to the next level. Plugins like Nik Collection, Luminar AI, and Topaz Labs offer filters and effects that enhance colors, detail, and overall image quality. These plugins are designed to simplify complex tasks and can save you time, especially when working with large numbers of images.

Keep experimenting with different tools, presets, and editing styles, and always keep your client’s needs in mind. With the right editing, your photos will not only stand out but will also showcase your unique style as a photographer.

Contact