In today’s article I will tell you how to retouch your photos with some basic touch-ups, in this way you will improve your images without the need for great editing knowledge, but enough for your images to improve considerably. Do you want to meet them? Well, sit down and read on.
Everyone who lands in the world of photography knows the frustration of uploading images to the computer and seeing that they are far from what they expected or that they have more errors than successes, this is much more common than you imagine, especially at the beginning . You take a photo and when you see the result, you are totally depressed.
- Photo editing programs don’t work miracles.
- But they help a lot.
- It’s like money.
- Isn’t it happiness? But let’s recognize that help helps.
- Well.
- It’s the same thing.
- With an editor.
- You won’t get the perfect image.
- But if you have a photo with a good base.
- It can help you improve it.
Yes, it is true, it has nothing to do with photo editing, however, as I mentioned at the beginning of the article, if there is not a good base little can be done, it is important to know what kind of image we want to capture before shooting, to know what we want to get and correct errors if there are any. To do this, I recommend reading this article in which I gave you nine tricks and tips to improve your composition.
Look at this example, could you improve the light, the color, the contrast ?, but the question is: is it really worth it ?, is this image interesting?The answer is no and no, it’s not worth it precisely because the image doesn’t matter, if I had done a better composition before shooting I could tweak, but since I didn’t, why am I wasting my time??
Now yes, we start the task with the first step. I’m not going to tell you what you already know (or should know) about the importance of lighting in a photograph. Light can be the protagonist on its own, and it can range from spoiling an image to making it look wonderful, but that’s another topic we’ve talked about in other publications before.
Today I only tell you that this is one of the most important basic settings to improve your image once you have it on your computer, change the curve of exposure levels and adjust the lighting, you can also play with the brightness and contrast levels, depending on the editor you choose. See this example before and after:
After adjusting the lighting and contrast, we move on to other basic level settings such as white balance, it is best to put it in RAW, because you can adjust it with a single click, otherwise you will have to do it manually. The following image has been modified with the “Color Balance” tool in Photoshop Express:
Another adjustment that you can easily change when editing your photos and that will help you improve them is focus or sharpness, this will be more or less convenient depending on the type of image that is, for example, in a portrait you are not too interested in increasing sharpness because all the imperfections of the skin will become more visible and I do not think that the person depicted is very funny (an example , example?) In this example, we have increased the level of sharpness.
I recommend that you save this setting for the end
Regulating the saturation level of your image will have remarkable results when retouching your photos, being able to increase or decrease the saturation. Your image can have very soft colors, in which case it increases the saturation a little to make them more vivid, it can also happen to you otherwise, as in the following example and what you should do is reduce the saturation level.
Another adjustment related to saturation is intensity. Several times, for example in portraits, it is better to adjust the intensity because it increases or decreases saturation depending on the saturation or not of the colors, while the saturation also does so throughout the photo. Let’s look at the difference between setting the intensity to 55 or saturation to 55:
We’ve talked about adjustments throughout the image, however, you can also apply your zone settings if necessary, select an area and adjust the levels only of the selected part, this is done with filters or brushes depending on the editor you’re using.
On several occasions there are elements that cannot be removed before filming, or you may simply not have noticed, a figure in the background sneaking in, papers on the floor, a cable that crosses a wall, graffiti, as in the case of our example. But fortunately, there is the cloning pad and the correction tool. Anyone can be used to remove unwanted items that can spoil our image. (Can it also be used to remove skin imperfections from a portrait (buttons, sores?) Or even to invent moles (Would Marilyn Monroe have been the same without her pretty mole?Shall I leave it at that?).
I know a lot of people like twisted horizons, I actually have a lot of pictures like that. This can be nice in an album where you paste your printed photo in the orientation you want, giving it a fun touch. But if you see the image on a computer, it’s not so good to see the horizons and the twisted lines.
The more you enter this world, the more they annoy, especially the daredevils. A beautiful sunrise at sea can be totally ruined if the horizon twists and we don’t want it, right?
It is possible that your image does not mean anything in color, no matter how much you touch up the brightness, contrast, cropping . . . Try changing it to black and white, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Black and white is not a solution, but when we start it can be a good exercise to see how grayscale works, on the other hand, sometimes you see something in a photo you don’t know, it’s possible that your brain already be black and white but you didn’t know it?
Sometimes you don’t have time to fit well, or you just don’t like the result as much as you expected, nothing happens, you can comfortably crop the image of your chair to crop it. A good frame can save a photo.
There are hundreds of creative filters in different publishers, a filter can give a special tone to an image by changing it completely with a single click. Look at this example:
In this image, all I’ve done is apply PicMonkey’s “Silent” filter. In Lightroom, for example, there are countless presets that modify a photo with a single click.
Keep in mind that abusing them isn’t right, but you can also apply them more or less intensely.
To make these adjustments you don’t need a lot of editing knowledge and as you’ve seen, the changes can be very visible, you can perform all these steps or just a few, it all depends on what your image asks. It may have been so beautiful that you don’t need to do any of these actions!
This retouching is also a matter of practice and in this case you don’t even need to go out, open your folder, look for a photo that does not convince you too much and get to work! Of course, if you “like” “before you make me happy, and if you share, even happier! Thanks and soon!?