12 years back, when I started photographing people, it was a different task to edit my photos. I used to shoot in RAW, import them into Lightroom, and export them as JPGs. I did this for one or two years! As the years passed, I understood that I should at least cull my photos and give them a sorted version to view the images. With time, I started with a few tweaks, and now I have ended up doing proper colour correction to every culled photo.
Photo editing doesn’t mean that you have to do high-end retouching or that you have to move things here and there. We often get confused about what is processing and what is graphic design. For me, photo editing or post-processing is a simple process of beautifying your photo.
Why did I start editing or processing my photos? When I asked myself this question, I got a few points, and I am sharing them with you.
You get a second chance to refine your photos
There is a high chance you may not have judged the exposure triangle properly. It happens to me every time because photos are spontaneous, and it can happen anywhere. Here comes editing into play. Maybe you have overexposed it by 2 stops, or maybe 1 or 2 stops under, or maybe you have messed up the white balance. You can easily fix it with editing and make the photo usable. There is also a high chance that photo might be a great photo, and you don’t have any other version of it.
It helps you establish your own style
If you see the works of legendary photographers, you will notice they have a very unique way of composing their photos, and they also have a very unique colour palette in their work. Composition is a different topic, but the colour treatment is part of their post-processing. They simply try to make the look similar across their work so that even if there is no logo or anything to identify who took the photo, you will still know the photo is by that photographer.
So now the question is, how could you know who has taken the shot? Yes, it is because of their composition, and moreover, their colour profile. If you see a photo by Alex Webb or Cartier-Bresson, you will definitely identify that the photo is by them.
Over the years of editing experience, you will develop your own style of processing, and that will end up being your own signature style.
Grabbing attention to the subject
Sometimes we take photos with a lot of distraction around the subject. It is your responsibility as a photographer to decide where your viewer’s eye will be drawn in the photo. Yes, there are several tricks to do it, but in editing, you can bring attention to your subject in many cases. Maybe the background light is too high, or maybe the subject needs to pop a bit more. You can easily do it with your brush tools in your editing software.
These are three key reasons why you should edit your photos. As a last tip, there is a famous saying among photography communities:
“You should not edit much in the photo, just do what your photo requires.”
You came this far reading, so let me know how you are planning to edit your photos. Goodbye till my next blog, and until then, “Happy clicking”
