Before and After

I get a lot of e-mails asking me about photo editing. Well, truth be told, not every picture I take is really all that great. But, most pictures can be edited and be improved greatly.

Take the photo above for example. There is a distinct shadow behind McWilliam. The color is too red. It is under exposed and the photo is just dull. I took it inside in low light with no flash. And I wasn't really paying much attention to anything, just snapped it on the fly.

There is no exact science to editing photos. Much of it comes down to the taste of the photographer. For this photo, I dialed down the saturation. I bumped up the exposure. I bumped up the green and blue hues and dialed down the red hues. I sharpened the image slightly. I brightened it, bumped up the contrast.... and this was the result.

Much of the editing process is like a game. You have to play around with what you like. I often change up what I like and do not edit each photo the same way. I really like using Lightroom. I still find photoshop too confusing. Lightroom is fairly simple to use and it allows me the ability to play with photos easily.

Editing does not have to be complicated and it is a fun way to take drab photos and make them pop.

In the end a lot of it will come down to what look you prefer. At first you will spend hours trying things out, but after a while you will figure out what you like and get much faster at editing. This photo took me under 3 minutes to edit.