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Photo Tip Thursday: Photo Editing Workflow

This week I thought I’d show you the workflow that I go through to edit outfit photos. There’s several basic adjustments that need to be made to a photo shot in RAW before you export them to be seen on your blog. I personally use Adobe Lightroom, but the terminology/settings {such as exposure, saturation, highlights/shadows} should be universal among applications so if you have Photoshop Elements, Camera RAW, or any other application, you should be able to make these exact same adjustments in these programs as well.

Let’s begin.

This is the original RAW image from the camera with no adjustments applied to it.

1. Exposure:

This one’s pretty basic. It has to do with the brightness of the image. If the image is too dark, move the exposure to the right to increase the brightness. If it’s too bright, move the slider to the left to decrease the brightness. Just make sure the levels of light look natural on your subject. You want to be able to see all the detail in their outfit as well as in their accessories while making sure that their skin tone looks natural.

The original photo was a little dark, so I increased the exposure just a bit to bring out more detail in the photo.

2. Temperature {White Balance}:

 

Image temperature has to do with the levels of blues/yellows in your images. Images that are more warm have more yellows. Images that are more cool have more blues in them. Base your adjustments in this realm on your subject’s skin tone. If the skin appears too warm {it has a yellowish/orange tint}, move the slider to the left to decrease the temperature. If it’s too cool {it has a bluish tint}, move the slider to the right to increase the temperature. Just make it look natural.

Luckily the temperature of this image was spot on so no adjustments were required.

3. Contrast:

Contrast increases the differences between the light and dark areas of the images. Increasing the contrast tends to bring more definition and detail into the finished image. RAW files naturally have much less contrast applied to an image than one in JPEG format would, so you have to apply this yourself. Move the slider to the right until there is more definition between the shadow and highlight areas of the subject and their outfit. Once again, make sure it looks natural!

Increasing the contrast made the lighter areas of the image lighter while darkening the darker areas. This adds more detail and definition to the photo.

4. Highlights/Shadows

The Highlights are the extremely bright/light colored areas of an image. The Shadows are the extremely dark/dim areas. Move the “Highlights” slider to the right to decrease detail {make them brighter} in the highlights, and to the left to increase highlight detail {make them darker}. Move the “Shadows” slider to the right to increase the detail {make the shadow areas brighter} seen in shadow areas of the image, move it to left to decrease the detail {make the shadow areas darker} in them and make them less pronounced.

Highlights:Shadows
I decreased the “Highlights” to bring in more detail not originally visible in the brighter areas of the image. I did not touch the shadows slider because I felt that the level of detail was adequate in the shadow regions and that they were not overexposed.

5. Whites/Blacks

The whites slider adjusts how “white” the whites look and the black slider adjusts how “black” the blacks look in the image. With the “Whites” slider, move it to the right if you want the white areas in your image to appear brighter. Conversely, move it to the left if they are too bright and you want them to appear dimmer. With the “Blacks” slider, move it to the right if you want to lighten up the black regions of your image. Conversely, move it to the left if they are overexposed and you want the black areas to appear…well, more black and darker.

I increased the “Whites” slider to make the whites in the image a little brighter. It really makes the whites “pop”.
I decreased the “Blacks” slider just a bit to make the blacks in the leopard spots stand out a little more and look more black.

6. Vibrance/Saturation


Vibrance and saturation both increase the amount of color in an image. They make the greens look greener and the yellows look more yellow and so on with each color. The only major difference is that the vibrance slider is much more subtle than the saturation slider. To begin, first move the “Vibrance” slider to the right. This mainly increases the levels of colors of everything but the skin tones. Next, move the “Saturation” slider to the right if you want even more color {including skin tones}. This increases the levels of colors in EVERYTHING! Be careful! Increasing the saturation too much can make the skin tones look orangish. Take care to avoid this.

By moving the “Vibrance” slider to the right, I increased the amount of green in the trees and turquoise in the leopard spots without affecting the skin tones too much.
By moving the “Saturation” slider to the right, I increased the amount of colors in EVERYTHING {including the skin tones of the subject}. Take care not to go overboard when increasing the saturation as it will make the skin appear an unnatural yellowish/orange tint!

  1. Thanks for sharing! I love these tips!
    The Style Storm
    <3, Christina

  2. D says:

    I love all of your tips! Can you do something on blurring the background ? Do you edit that in or accomplish it by adjusting the f-stop? I am still struggling with this! Thanks again!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Just started following you on ig! Wowza! Love all the information and gorgeous pics. I was hoping to get some advice on a up and coming computer purchase. If you can share what type of computer you use that would be great. We are simply using ours for social media, editing pictures, writing and so on. Appreciate any suggestions.

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