Do you feel like why your photos never look as good as the ones you can see on Instagram?
Don’t worry, you just need to learn the 5 basics of photo editing that will make your photos pop and look 1000 times better.
This post will cover the 5 basics of photo editing for beginners that will help you edit photos like a professional.
Which photo editor is best for beginners?
Starting from the start… You must be wondering: “Which photo editor is best for beginners?”
No doubt about it, if you wonder how to edit photos like a professional, you have to get the right tool right from the start.
Lightroom (from the Adobe Creative Suite) is THE BEST photo editor for beginners.
You can download it from the Adobe Creative Cloud on your computer, or get it from the Google Play Store or Apple app Store on your phone. And good news, this photo editor has a free version for mobile.
You won’t have access to all the tools if you get the free version of Lightroom on your phone but, believe me, it will be enough in order to start learning the 5 basics of photo editing.
first step: crop your image
The first step when editing your photo is to crop your image.
Think about where you want the main subject to be in your photo, how close you want it to appear, and how much of the background you want to keep.
But where to find the crop tool in Lightroom? I will show you exactly how to do it on the next images.
Once you’ve selected the cropping tool, a grid will appear on your photo. This is the grid of the “Rule of third”. Try to place your subject on one of the intersection point or in the two lower middle square.
You can also select a pre-defined ratio if you want to use your photo for social medias.
Now that your photo is cropped, let get onto Step 2 of our 5 basics of photo editing.
STEP 2: ADJUST WHITE BALANCE
If you are a beginner in photo editing, you must wonder, “What the heck is White Balance?”. Don’t worry, I will tell you everything about it.
Basically, by adjusting the white balance, the goal is to give the colors their true aspects. Sometimes, due to the lighting, the white in your photos will look a bit yellow or blue. The white balance adjustment will fix that.
Then, once the White Balance tool is activated, select a white part of your photo. Editing is all about creativity, so don’t be afraid to play around and see what you like the most. There is no fixed rules!
Now let get onto the third step of our 5 basics of photo editing.
STEP 3: BASIC ADJUSTMENTS
I’m going to walk you through all the different basic adjustments you can make so you get the best editing results.
- These two first adjustments you can make are going to alter the temperature color of your photo. You can then choose if you want warmer or colder tones. Like I said before, editing photos is all about being creative, so play around and have fun!
- Exposition: The exposure is the amount of light that reaches the sensor of your camera when you take the photo. You can here adjust it if your photo seems under-exposed or over-exposed.
- Highlights: The highlights setting is going to make brighter, or darker, the brightest parts of your photo. It can help you recover lost details in your image.
- Shadows: Here you can adjust the darkest parts of your photo. It is the opposite of the highlights adjustment and can also help you recover lost details.
- Whites: Adjusting the whites will adjust the overall brightness of your photo, as well as the white points.
- Blacks: On the contrary, the blacks will adjust the overall darkness of your photo, making the darkest past darker or lighter.
- Contrast: The contrast is the difference between the brightest and the darkest parts of your photos. That’s why you should only adjust it once you have adjusted the other settings. The lower the contrast, the more detailed your photo will be. On the contrary, a high contrast will remove some details from your image.
Remember, editing photos is a creative process. Play around with the different adjustments to see what look you want to achieve and to find your personal editing style.
STEP 4: Adjusting colors
Also called HSL, adjusting colors and tones, is the fourth step of our 5 basics of photo editing.
It is time to free your creativity even more and edit the colors in your photo.
The first one, “Tone”, is affecting the tone of the colors. You should try them one by one to see how the adjustments influence your photo. It enables you to change the tone of a given color.
The second one, “Saturation”, is simply altering the saturation of the give color. If you slide it completely to the left, the color will turn into a shade of gray.
The third and last one, “Luminance”, impact how much light will be present in the given color.
Once again, just play around with the different adjustment, and find your own style in editing photos.
STEP 5: Masks
Last but not least of our 5 basics of photo editing: Adding masks.
Once you have edited all the previous settings of photo editing in Lightroom, you can add something called “Masks”.
The masks are used to target a specific area of your photo. You can select the area you want and adjust the previous settings over this part only to make it pop more or make local corrections.
There are 3 useful types of masks when you are editing photos as a beginner :
- Brush: The brush tool is to apply corrections at specific places. You select the points you want to edit manually.
- Lineal gradient: The lineal gradient is, as it names mentions it, used to make lineal gradient. It will apply the modifications you have made on the chosen part of your photo and slowly transitions, for a smooth aspect, to the unmodified part.
- Radial gradient: It works the same way the lineal gradient works but in the shape of a circle.
For both, the lineal and the radial gradient, you can select if you want the modifications to be applied to the selected zone or to the unselected zone.