So, you’ve captured some stunning snaps but want to digitally enhance the photo to make those suitable for different marker channels like social media, websites, or online stores. Start your editing process by selecting the best photos, devices, and photo editing software.
After that go through our professional editing tips, techniques, and step-by-step post-processing process that helps you to retouch images like a pro. Let’s get started!
Photo editing is the process of image enhancement and manipulation through digital photo editing software. These edits can include altering color, removing background, cropping, resizing, adjusting saturation, etc. Basic to advanced edits (photo retouching, e-commerce product photo editing, etc) are performed to grab target consumers’ attention.
In short,
- Photo editing is the art of making stunning and powerful images to grab consumers’ attention.
- These edits are done using digital photo editing software.
- You can edit from basic (cropping, resizing, etc.) to advanced-level (adjusting contrast, saturation, etc.).
- Photo retouching offers high-quality product images that build trust and increase conversion rates.
Amazed at photo editing benefits and want to explore more? Check out the next section to learn more about basic photo editing techniques!
Basic Photo Editing Techniques
Professional photo editors perform different types of photo editing techniques, such as –
Cropping
One of the most basic and essential photo editing techniques is cropping, which involves cutting out unnecessary elements from the image to focus consumers’ attention on the main product. For example, if you notice distracting background elements or a lot of empty space in the photo, you can crop them out and highlight the texture or material.
Also, you can create different versions of an image, such as square, vertical, and horizontal, and use the same image across your marketing channels. For cropping your images, you can use different editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or even GIMP.
Resizing
Another common and basic photo editing technique is resizing. It helps correct the dimensions of photos on your website, online store, or social media platforms. If the photos are too small, they might appear pixelated or fuzzy. However, the larger ones might slow down the page loading speed.
So, to give your website or e-commerce store a sharp and stunning look, you need to utilize these techniques. You can use Adobe Photoshop and other software to resize your image.
Color correction
The most popular and effective photo editing technique in online business. Do your product photos look dull, yellowish, or fade the real color? With color correction, you can adjust a photo’s hues, saturation, and even brightness and highlight products’ actual colors.
It not only gives products a realistic and natural look but also builds online shoppers’ trust. For example, if you’re selling apparel, your main goal is to represent the same color that your photographers see during shooting. You can outsource photo editing services or do it by yourself through Adobe Photoshop software.
Background Removal
You can apply this photo editing technique when you want to remove unwanted backgrounds from your products. Professional photo retouchers use background removal to give images a cleaner and more professional outlook.
EBay, Amazon, or other giant e-commerce platforms prefer white backgrounds to promote product items. With this photo editing technique, you can do it perfectly. Not only that, but you can also add a vignette or change the photo’s perspective depending on your marketing channels.
White balance
One of the most used post-processing processes is white balance, which adjusts the color of digital photos and makes them more realistic. Suppose you shoot fashion photos with natural light from an overcast sky; your product photos will have a cold color temperature, more of a blue tone.
However, shooting with typical tungsten light bulbs creates a warm color tone and shows more yellow or orange. Different color lighting situations create different color temperatures and convey different moods. Here, white balance allows you to improve your image quality in a broader range of lighting situations.
Exposure
In photo editing, “exposure” refers to the image’s overall brightness (the level of light in the photoshoot). The image with too low exposure will appear too dark, and the high level of exposure will be too bright. If your images aren’t captured perfectly, you must improve their appearance through this photo editing.
Contrast
The contrast indicates the range of brightness (from lightest to darkest) in an image. For example, a high-contrast image appears more vibrant and detailed shadow. On the contrary, the lower ones provide a softer and more muted look with fewer details (light and dark areas). If you notice this tonal difference doesn’t balance naturally, you can retouch it through editing.
Clarity
Clarity affects your photo’s middle tones (the darkest shadows or brightest highlights) and emphasizes textures a little more. With these editing techniques, you can bring out subtle details in a photo by maintaining the overall tonal balance. It also adds depth and dimension to a photo without appearing overly artificial or sharpened.
Saturation
Saturation defines the intensity of a color. The more saturated a hue is, the more vibrant the image is. But the lower color’s saturation is closer to grayscale and might have a “muting” impression. Increasing the saturation level will give the image a more colorful look. Be aware of over-saturation because it destroys images’ realistic appeal.
Sharpening
The camera’s RAW data is somewhat unsharp, and blur is introduced at different stages in the image. You might also notice some definition is lost, no matter how professionally captured they are. Here, sharpening enhances an image’s perceived sharpness by increasing the contrast between light and dark pixels. From minimizing blurring to improving visibility, it is a must-have technique.
Noise reduction
Noise reduction refers to removing unwanted grainy pixels or discoloration from photographs. It is mainly used in low-light situations to give an image a smoother and more refined appearance by preserving important details. Be careful when applying too much; it can blur important details in photos.
Lens correction
With this photo editing technique, you can fix optical imperfections and distortions caused by digital camera lenses, such as barrel distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration. Depending on the lens model used for outdoor fashion & product photoshoots, lens corrections are applied. The common and mostly corrected formats are dimming around the frame’s corners, straight lines seeming curled, or color fringes near edges.
Perspective correction
You can apply perspective correction within “converging verticals” photographs, which means adjusting and correcting distorted vertical and horizontal lines in a photo. This technique is used to make buildings appear straight and balanced when photographers shoot from a low angle.
Grain
In cinematography, the grain term is used to showcase how sharply and professionally an image captures detail. It basically gives a textured or vintage look to the image. Photographers often add grain to fashion photos to achieve a nostalgic, retro, or artistic look.
Vignette
You might notice dramatic darkening edges in portrait or product photography. Those darker borders around the photo’s center grab the viewer’s attention to the focal point of the image. The key goal of this photo editing technique is to enhance the composition and add depth and visual interest.
Radial filter tool
When you want to emphasize certain sections of your fashion images, use a radial filter tool. With this tool, you can adjust specific image areas and modify aspects like sharpness, saturation, and exposure within those selected areas. Not only that, you can create a vignette effect by adjusting exposure or darkness within this filter. Also, you get the flexibility to apply different edits in a selected area.
Graduated filter tool
Do you want to make adjustments to a specific area? With this filter, you can add a correction to a single region of a photograph without leaving a visible line separating the correct and incorrect portions. Don’t mix out between global modifications like the exposure or contrast settings. This effect is great for darkening the sky or lighting foregrounds.
HSL
HSL refers to hue (the actual color), saturation (the intensity of the color), and luminance (how bright or dark the color is) that allows you to adjust product image color precisely. With this editing, you get fine-grained control over the color composition. To modify these values, use photo editing software like Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, or others. It also allows you to generate or adjust any color (black & white or colored ones) accurately.
Feeling excited thinking about how to edit photos like a professional? Check out the next section now and explore professional photo editing tips.
Top 12 Photo Editing Tips: How to edit like a pro
Ready to take your images to the next level? Here are the top 12 photo editing tips for aster and professional edits:
Select the Most Appropriate Equipment and Device
Choosing the correct device and equipment is crucial in photo editing. A good image has polished and important details that ease your editing process. For example, a garment photo with accurate color, design, and styles. Some retouchers use tablets to edit photos.
Some of the best-selling photo editing laptops are the Microsoft Surface Pro 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+, Lenovo Tablet P11 Pro, and Microsoft Surface Pro 9. You can use iPad Pro 12.9 or iPad Air as an Apple user. Do you love large screens for photo editing? The best choices are Dell XPS 14, Asus Pro Art P16, and Apple MacBook Pro 16.
Start with High-Quality Photos
Before starting editing, choose your best shots. Don’t waste your precious time editing random photos. If you use Adobe Lightroom, there are different methods, like picking and rejecting, that help in photo selection. Also, you can try a star rating system, where three stars indicate the photo looks good on your first pass, and five stars trim even better compared to others.
Use Professional Editing Software
When you want to get pixel-perfect photos and fulfill e-commerce requirements, you must choose the best photo editing software with advanced editing functions, such as –
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Lightroom Classic is an awesome editing tool to bring out dull-looking shots vibrantly, remove distracting objects, straighten skewed shots, and many more. You can easily organize all your photos and share them in different ways. By using this tool, you get creative controls like a powerful new masking tool, remove distractions, and apply presets to specific parts of your photo.
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Adobe has another amazing software for hobbyists, which is Photoshop Elements. From basic to advanced, you can edit and create edits in fun ways like removing objects, creating depth, changing colors, combining multiple photos, etc. Also, you can fix, fine-tune, or turn any image into a creative canvas with animated and AI options.
Skylum Luminar
Luminar’s innovative photo editing tool is popular for enhancing, transforming, and creating the best images. You don’t need any software subscription fees and require a large amount of storage space on your device. A simple interface is ideal for beginners. Here, you’ll get magic effects, a fully automated & dual-engine processing engine that corrects exposures, and many more.
Adobe Photoshop Express
From editing to adding premium features, you can make advanced edits in one platform. With this software, you can polish your shots with intelligent tools like cutouts, retouching, and noise reduction. Also, you can easily create a scrapbook collage effect within seconds. You can also get more creative control with auto-masking, remove discoloration, personal stickers, subtle tweaks, and more.
Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is one of the best and most powerful photo editors, with an intuitive interface and a one-time purchase model. Its attractive live filters, comprehensive selection tools (refine edge, channels, etc.), adjustment layers, and other features give you the flexibility to showcase your creativity.
GIMP
Free software is used to edit photos and produce graphics and artwork. You can use this software on different operating systems like Linum, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. From brightness correction to color balance, adding text, removing unwanted objects, and many other edits are performed perfectly.
Use Batch Editing to Save Time
Do you ever shoot a series of photos in the same scene or subject? If so, you don’t need post-processing each image individually. Here, you can do a batch edit using Lightroom software. The process is simple enough – copy and paste the settings or use the “Sync button.” Then, edit one photo and select the edited image to copy your settings. Go to Edit -> Copy (ctrl or Command+C).
You might notice a dialogue box asking which settings you want to copy. Check all or individual settings. After that, unedited ones and paste the settings [Edit -> Paste]. Now, to sync settings, select all similar images and edited ones and click the “Sync button” in the Develop mode. All is done!
Bring colors to life
Sometimes, you notice a lot of bright colors in photos or more muted ones. You can adjust colors and make them more professional to match the actual product’s appeal. For this, simply adjust the contrast, saturation, and vibrance of an image. Contrast is useful for visually altering colors when shooting in a RAW format. However, you can take advantage of the HSL tool to adjust colors.
Don’t Overdo It
A well-crafted photo has its popularity and demand on different marketing channels. But if you overdo edits, the photo loses its natural feel. So, before adding contrast or correction colors, don’t overdo it. Imagine an image that looks far from its reality; it might be a distraction. Also, avoid strong vignettes, extra color grades, and white balances.
Crop and Straighten for Better Composition
Cropping is an effective photo editing technique to remove unwanted or blank edges from an image, making the image suitable for several platforms like social media. Before publishing, pay attention to the standard aspect ratios (4:3) for different platforms. For example, Instagram prefers a 1:1 ratio. Also, don’t overlook straight lines, which will affect the balance of the photography of an image.
Adjust White Balance
White balance determines how warm (a yellow or sunny look) or cool (blue tones) the light is. You can edit the white balance using the temperature tool. Move the temperature slider to the right for warmer tones, and for cool tones, move to the left. With Lightroom, you get an auto white balance button to adjust the lighting conditions.
Tweak Shadows and Highlights
Want to bring balance to extremes of brightness or darkness? You can achieve your goal through the shadows and highlights sliders. Suppose you notice a dark part of an image but don’t want to blow out the sky color. In this scenario, you just simply drag the shadows slider to the right and increase the brightness of darker parts.
Understanding Color Balance, Vibrance, and Saturation
Utilize color balance by picking specific colors from the color palette. Vibrance works perfectly with the color intensity without changing the well-saturated parts. On the other hand, vibrance is useful for balancing skin tone and giving a natural look. Avoid overdoing saturation because it makes photos artificial.
Retouching and Removing Unwanted Backgrounds
The last yet important photo editing tactic is removing or retouching unwanted image backgrounds. In e-commerce product photography, shoppers refer to high-quality product visuals highlighting key features. Here, busy or distracted backgrounds discourage buyers most. There are different tools to remove backgrounds, such as a pen tool, magic eraser tool, quick selection tool, background removal tool, and magic wand tool.
FAQ
How much does professional photo editing cost?
Professional photo editing may cost from 0.29$ to 75$ or more per image depending on the editing complexity, editor experience, project type, and many others.
How can I get my photos professionally edited?
You can outsource photo editing services from a reputed agency like Masking Aid, hire freelancers, or use photo editing software. The best solution is to choose a service where you get an expert graphic designer team, a clear pricing structure, on-time delivery, and high-quality work.
Stay Updated and Keep Learning
At first, photo editing can seem a challenging task, but with the help of professional photo editing tips and techniques, the process becomes fun and easy. We hope you can make your best edits by going through this article.
Be mindful and confident in your skills, and don’t worry about messing up. You must focus on your style and the ultimate photo editing goal.
