Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones and this is episode 100 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
So last week I mentioned that I’d be doing a giveaway. I’ll give you more info on that at the end of this episode.
This week’s episode comes to you courtesy of Jeff Smith in Western Australia, he left this message on SpeakPipe …
Thanks, Jeff.
So this week's episode is …
As a new photographer editing can be daunting. But it’s just like anything else in life, the more you do it the better you get. The beauty of editing photos is, if you mess up you can start again from the beginning.
Now I’m pretty sure you want to make money as a photographer, or you already are, so you need to produce the best images possible. Your customers don’t want flat snapshot images, they want photos that they couldn’t possibly take. They want to be wowed. The only way to give your customers quality photos is to shoot in RAW and edit the images.
Editing Software
Now there are lots of options out there from free to expensive. I’m not going to try and cover them all right now.
GIMP
A free option is GIMP. It will allow you to do a good basic edit, but nowhere near as intensive as the best-paid options.
The top options you have to pay for are Capture One, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Lightroom. I know there are many other excellent programs out there, but these are the ones that are used by most professional photographers
Capture One
Capture One is produced by PhaseOne which is a Danish company. They make camera equipment and very expensive cameras. A 150MP body will cost you north of $50,000, so I don’t see one of those on my Christmas list anytime soon. Now I haven’t had much experience using Capture One so I can’t say if it’s your best option. I tried it way back, so even if I could remember how it was it wouldn’t be anything like Capture One today.
Capture One will cost you around $300, I’m not sure how long before you need to update the license though.
If you shoot in a studio Capture One is known as a great tethering software. Meaning you run a cable from your camera to your computer and can see the photos on the screen as they are shot. I think the latest version offers wireless tethering.
Adobe offers the most popular programs in Photoshop and Lightroom which are available through Adobe Creative Cloud. It costs $10 a month for PS and LR together, Plus you get other programs too. This is what I use.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is an amazing tool and I have used it to make my work easier to sell. It is perfect for adding text and special effects to your images. But, it is more suitable for editing one image at a time, which is great if you are touching up photos before getting them printed. If you have a batch of 1000 photos that need editing then you need to be using Lightroom.
Adobe Lightroom
Lightroom has all the bells and whistles and can make editing 1000 photos fast and efficient. You can do just about everything in Lightroom and if you need to you can continue the edit in Photoshop and then come back into Lightroom.
The new AI selection and masking tools make once difficult tasks happen in seconds. It has never been easier to edit a photo. The speed at which this technology is moving forward is wild. By this time next year, all this information might be useless.
There is another program called Imagen AI that might be useful when you have editing figured out. It looks at your photo edits and once it has your personal AI profile it can apply it to any of your Lightroom catalogs. It only takes ½ a second to edit one photo, ½ a second.
Before you can use something like Imagen AI you need to …
Now you have picked your editing software you need to start using it.
Start with Simple Edits
A simple edit is cropping the image if needed. You would do this if the subject is in the middle of the frame and you want them off to the side a little.
Next, you can address the exposure. The exposure can make the photo lighter or darker. Now if you need help deciding, Lightroom has an auto button. It will change the exposure to what it thinks is best. Just use this as a starting point and adjust it to where you think it looks best.
If the whites in your photo have a color cast you can correct that by adjusting the white balance.
The next thing to look for is dust spots. These are caused by dust on your camera sensor and show up in the image as small round blotches. To remove these you need to use a Healing tool in PS and LR.
Once you have completed these steps you have done a basic edit.
Go Deeper and Experiment
So you’ve cropped the photo, adjusted the exposure, and white balance, and removed any dust spots.
Next, try adjusting the contrast. Now I don’t use contrast very often, it adjusts the bright parts of the image and if it is set low the photo will look flat.
For all the other settings try them and experiment. If it improves the look of the photo great, keep it like that. Just remember if you use too much of one setting it will cause a problem with something else.
Too much sharpening will make your image grainy. Then you try noise reduction to reduce the graininess and you lose detail. So instead of pushing the sharpening slider all the way to the right only move it to 10 instead of 150.
The same goes for all the settings, experiment with them and find out what you can do with them. At first, your photos might end up looking a bit extreme, but you’ll soon find out what pleases you.
Presets
A preset gives a photo a look or effect. It is just a file that has all the settings someone used to make an image look a certain way. So if you edit an image and really like the result, you can save it as a preset and use it on all the photos you’re working on.
This can speed up your editing and give your photos a similar look. There are lots of presets that come with LR and other programs. Other photographers sell their own presets.
If you apply a preset and it's not quite how you want the photo to look you can adjust it until you are happy with it. Then you can save it as another preset.
Now using presets is great, but, don’t try to make all your images look the same from session to session. Treat each session you shoot differently, not all locations have the same range of colors. Using a wedding preset that works well with lots of white in the scene, won’t work if the location you used has very little white.
So work on the first few images and come up with a new preset that you can use on the rest of the photos.
Selection and Masking tools
Now all the edits I have just been talking about are general edits working on the whole image. LR now allows you to select specific parts of the photo to work on.
When you use a mask the AI automatically knows when there are people in the image. But it doesn’t stop there, because it gives you the option to pick out which person you want to work on. Then when you have picked a person it gives you the option to create an individual mask for their hair, facial skin, body skin, eyebrows, lips, pupils, and even the whites of the eyes. So you end up with 8 layer mask that can be edited.
You can also edit the background and sky, or any part of the image can be picked and edited separately from the rest of the image.
So learning how to use the mask feature is crucial to creating images that customers want. Again, if you don’t like the result you can go back and start again. When you pick a photo to edit make a copy to work on. You can do this by clicking PHOTO and then CREATE A VIRTUAL COPY. Work on the copy and if it doesn’t work out you can either hit RESET or delete it and make another virtual copy to work on.
How do you know when the Images are finished?
The answer to this question is when you are happy with it.
Now if the image has bright areas and dark shadowed areas, changing the exposure might work for part of the image but not all of it. If this happens use the mask tools to work on specific areas of the image.
And again, when you are happy with the result, your edit is finished. You will find over time that your likes and dislikes will change and so will your editing.
If you look at some of your older photos that you really like but don’t like the way you edited them, re-edit them.
Don’t be afraid of experimenting, you don’t know what you are capable of until you give it a go.
Ok, I think that covers everything. If you have any questions you can contact me through the Facebook group or Facebook Messenger, there’s a link in the show notes.
Now for the Giveaway
My initial thought was to have just one prize, but whatever I looked at wasn’t available in all the countries where this Podcast is downloaded. So I decided to have eight smaller prizes. Now if you are outside of North America I will try to find a similar product at a similar price point, but if I can’t you will receive an Amazon gift card for that amount instead.
If you win and you’re in Australia or New Zealand you’ll probably get an Amazon gift card. I can’t believe how much you guys have to pay for photography equipment.
So the first four picked out will receive Neewer 5-in-1, 32” Reflectors, and the next four will get SD Memory Card cases.
The 5-in-1 Reflectors are White, Silver, Gold, Black, and transparent. If you are outdoors and shooting a portrait you can use a white, silver, or gold reflector to remove any shadows.
Let's say you are getting shadows under your subject's chin. If you have the subject hold the white reflector horizontally at waist height, out of frame, the sunlight will bounce off the reflector and light the areas that were in shadow.
The silver reflector will do the same, but the light will be a little harsher.
Gold will create a softer glowing light.
Black will stop any reflection or can be used to block light coming in.
The transparent can be used as a diffuser. If you can get an assistant to hold it up between the sun and the subject's face the light will be softer. If you are using flash you can shoot the flash through it to diffuse the light on the subject.
They can all be used in the studio to the same effect. It’s a great tool to have.
The SD Card cases hold 12 SD cards and are small enough to keep in your pocket. They are water-resistant and shockproof and will save your cards from damage.
So to enter go to PhotographySideHustle.com. Entries will close on April 21st at midnight, Eastern Time. So you’ve got approximately 12 days.
Right then, I think that’s it for this episode. I’ll be back next week, bye for now.