Photo editing
Shooting photos of any subject is just half the job. The other half, perhaps the most difficult half, is photo editing.
There are numerous ways to edit photos. What makes it difficult is when you don’t know what style your client likes. Take one photo, for example. You can make it look several different ways just through editing. You can alter the color. You can make it black and white. You can brighten or darken it. You can blur it. You can put skin smoothing on faces. Sometimes I like to take one photo and deliver it pretty much as shot and then add the same photo into the batch with some different editing techniques. I figure that way the client can choose which one is favored.
Regardless, it’s a good idea to ask clients what they want in their photo editing. Do they want black and white photos? Do they want skin retouching. Do they want moles removed?
One popular technique of photographers is adding vignettes to photos. Those are the darkening or the lightening of the edges of a photo — kind of like putting a halo all the way around. It can look nice on some photos and bad on others. I’ve had clients tell me they don’t want vignettes on their photos. Conversations like that are good to have so you don’t disappoint.
How much photo editing is required will depend on how well the photos were shot. I’ve had some pictures taken that when I look at them, I feel like I don’t need to do anything to them. Sometimes I feel bad, though, if I don’t edit a photo even if I don’t think it needs it. I feel like I’m neglecting something.
Some photos I feel need little editing, however. Normally, all photos need some sort of color adjusting, but some routine candid shots I feel don’t need much editing at all. I generally save the heavy photo editing to the portraits, as those are the ones more likely to be enlarged and framed, so you want to make sure those look their best.
Photographers use different programs to edit photos. I use Adobe Camera Raw for most of my editing along with its companion Photoshop, when needed. Camera Raw will do most of the necessary adjustments. Photoshop is opened only when some more extensive work needs to be done. Many photographers use Adobe Lightroom, but I just find that program a little more cumbersome to use, so I rarely open it.
Photo editing can be an interesting process. It can be fun seeing how many different ways you can make a photo look. The extreme example posted in this blog, for example, shows the photo pretty much as shot compared with one with some heavy editing. I asked a few people which one they liked better. You guessed it — they liked the standard photo editing job best.
