Clean Photo Editing

[Maribeth Seagers]

Dependingon your photographic niche, the way you choose to post produce and edit your images is a key factor in achieving cohesiveness in your portfolio. Utilizing editing software such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop can help you develop a style and aesthetic that is personal to you.

In order for your images to look polished and professional, you will want to focus the majority of your edits on making lighting corrections. It is important to note that shooting in camera RAW mode will allow you to make the most of your editing process. If you have this capability, change your image capture mode prior to shooting.

Lighting corrections in post-production include changes to exposure, highlights, shadows and adjusting your black and white points. By shooting in RAW mode, you can bring details back into the image that may have been lost while shooting by increasing or decreasing some of these lighting values. This allows you to set a base for your images that define your editing style.

While using editing programs including Lightroom or Photoshop, it can be easy to over-manipulate the color of your image. With tools such as the RGB curve, HSL or Split Toning, these capabilities can be very powerful and effective when used properly. When aiming to create a consistent and clean photo editing style, avoid harsh or dramatic color edits that appear inauthentic to the original image.

Each photographer has a colour editing style that is specific and recognizable to their work. Whilst you can create a color style that is unique to you, be sure to remember that professional images maintain accurate color consistency. You want to make sure to change your image color values with intention, and use this same method across your body of work.

Another tip to creating a consistent and clean photo editing style is to remove distracting elements from your images. This may include background elements, imperfections of your subject, or even poor composition. Many of these imperfections can be fixed by utilizing removal tools such as healing brushes or the clone stamp.

The overall composition of the image can also be improved by altering the cropping and fixing alignment problems with straightening. In order for your work to have a professional appearance, you must remember to fix the imperfections and pay attention to the smaller details of your images.

For example, in the image below, I wanted more of the sky and less of the tree branches. Using the Lightroom Clone Stamp tool, I was able to remove some of the branches by replacing it with the blue detail of the sky. You can change your image as you see fit to avoid an image with distracting or unnecessary elements.

The most effective way to create consistent editing in your post-production workflow is to create tools such as presets in Lightroom or actions in Photoshop. These capabilities were created so you can save edits and reapply them across multiple sets of images. Depending on the editing software you prefer to use, presets and actions are both fairly simple to create and integrate into your editing workflow.

Actions can be very effective for portrait photographers who need to retouch and fine tune the facial features of their subject. You can create actions to smooth skin, remove blemishes and even for methods such as frequency separation.

As you can see, a consistent and clean photo editing style is achieved through integrating techniques such as; lighting adjustments, natural color edits, and the elimination of distracting elements. It is also achieved by using tools such as Lightroom Presets or Photoshop Actions. In your body of work, having an editing style that is cohesive and visually appealing will give your images a truly professional touch.

You may have heard or already know how important it is to get your images as correct in camera as possible. Getting it right in camera really helps me cut down on my editing time. I almost have it down to a science now and I shoot a certain way so that I have consistent images to work with in post-processing.

This image definitely needs to be warmed up a bit and I actually like my images to be a little cooler out of camera and overall. Exposure and white balance go hand in hand, so I will adjust my exposure and then my white balance and see if I need to adjust my exposure again. If warming up the image has affected my exposure too much, I will adjust it.

Here you can see the minor adjustments I made. The white balance was increased to 4989 Kelvin and the tint stayed where it was at, at +8. I brought down the exposure by -.15, highlights were at -67 and the whites were at -42.

She has a few little white spots and patches on her skin that will be easy to get rid of using the spot healing brush. I use the bracket keys to control the size of the brush and simply click where I want to clean up.

I changed the opacity of the stamp to be 20% and changed the flow to 60%. I chose an area just under where the darker areas are to be my source and held down my option key (alt on a PC) and clicked to select it.

I then brushed over the dark circles until it looked nicely blended. It is normal for people to have a little bit of darkness just under their eyes, so I took the whole layer opacity down to 50% to make sure it still looked very natural.

Once I have my settings set, I click okay and then adjust the layer opacity in Photoshop. For adults, I typically use 65% opacity but I find that with my daughter, she already has such beautiful skin that I end up using an opacity right around 35%.

I then duplicate that screen layer and change the blending mode to soft light. I left it at 15% opacity and then created a brightness/contrast adjustment layer above that to bring down the contrast just a bit. I typically bring the contrast down anywhere from -15 to -30. For this image, I used -15. Then I flattened my layers again.

The next step is a dodge and burn layer. I want to do this non-destructively, so I hold down my option key (alt on a PC) as I click to add a new layer. This brings up this box below. You can see the options I selected.

I will also brush lightly over her catch lights as well. When I am done, I reduced the layer opacity to 25%. I am always turning off and on the layer to check and see how much of a difference it is making.

Remember that my goal is to enhance the image and not overpower it. I want it to be subtle because especially on children, it is so easy to do too much. I flatten when I am done and am ready to sharpen.

Click okay and then it is really important to do this next step immediately because it is only available right after using the unsharp mask. Go to edit>fade unsharp mask. I set the fade opacity to 33%.

The very last step is to convert it to sRGB so that it is ready to save as a jpeg and print. Go to edit>convert to profile to do this. That will insure that the color will not change in your image and it is now ready to print!

Hi Natalie! I use them right on top of each other to save a couple of steps. I could break it into 2 layers, change the opacities and then merge them together but I find that it saves me a step or two to do it this way! ?

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When it comes to my own work, I prefer a happy middle of the two. I could never find a specific preset that did everything that I wanted, so I ended up creating my own. I think of them as starting points; they evolve with each & every session.

The range of tones and character of light can only be adjusted so much in post-production. The biggest factor is how the photo was taken in the first place. And that involves a countless amount of decisions & variables.

The first thing that I would recommend is examining your shooting style. I always try to nail exposure in camera to preserve both the highlights and the shadows. So in a super bright environment, that usually means underexposing by a stop or two. In darker settings, that might mean overexposing a bit. But really it depends on your subject(s) and the primary focus of the scene.

When it comes to editing, I apply a light tone curve to boost contrast. From there, I start going down the list of tone & presence settings. I generally bump shadows and then adjust the highlights no more than plus or minus 20 in either direction. I typically bump vibrance 10-20 points and decrease saturation by about 20%.

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Hello ! We're a family of 4, Marc, Ana and our 2 children Kyra and Eliah (and Charlotte our cat). We are both self employed : Marc is a photographer and I'm a naturopathe.

We'd love our kids to discover many cultures and ways of life thanks to our hosts, our travels and adventures.

We're very much into relaxed local/healthy eating and living. We've started our little garden, learning how to grow things in a permaculture way.

We have many different projects that you can help us with, depending on when you come : it goes from cooking to flooring, or computer work to cleaning, gardening and/or babysitting..! :)

We love travelling and meeting people although we're trying to get our CO2 emissions down now, so travelling differently. We try not to fly anymore.

We speak a few languages. Our kids are a lot of fun (of course can make you very tired, but objectively adorable :)). They only speak fluent French, although we're hoping they can start learning other languages. We'd be happy to teach you some French during meals for eg.

We love nature, and Switzerland, and will be happy to share who we are with you!

If you need any advice, we'll be happy to help if we can.

Our place is in a small village (so little public transport) but central in Switzerland and close to a motorway, 5km out of a little town and shops.

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