Learn 5 photo editing basics today

Do you know the basics of photo editing? It’s super easy, and can help to improve your photography skills in a big way! In this blog post, we’ll talk about what the 5 photo editing basics everyone should know. We’ll also look at which photo editing software is best for beginners. So if you’re interested in learning more about how to edit photos today, then read on!

Is editing important in photography?

For many beginners out there, they seem to skip this part of the photography process completely. The problem with that is when they mix information. So when should you always edit?

This comes down to knowing your workflow. If you don’t want to edit your photos at all, they using a Jpeg format is a good idea. You save space and your camera will add the edit for you. If you want to edit then you need to use a RAW / DNG file format in order to have the raw data required for a good edit.

The biggest editing mistake I see if people using a flat raw format and then not finishing the editing themselves. The second mistake is over editing because they don’t fully understand their editor.

No one photo editing software is not better than the other. There are some things a beginner might find easier with one over another, and that’s fine! It doesn’t matter which one you pick, they all have the follow editing tools.

5 photo editing basics everyone should know.

Step One: Crop Photo
The first thing you’ll need to do when you’re looking to edit your photos is crop it. You can either use free-form or aspect ratio cropping where you select a ratio (e.g., 16×11) to crop an image for a specific print size or digital display aspect ratio. Depending on where you want to use your photo you’ll need to think about what aspect ration you want to use.
Cropping your photo will also impact its overall composition.

The three biggest uses for crop are:

  • Create a better composition
  • Straighten your horizons
  • Eliminate unwanted distractions from the photo.

While most camera’s and editors have the traditional 3 x 3 grid to help create balance and some editors like Lightroom have several grid overlays that will help you create different types of compositions and help ensure your horizontal and vertical lines are straight.

Struggling to decide: Portrait vs Landscape vs Square.


Step Two: Exposure

Now that you’ve cropped your photo, it’s time to adjust its exposure by using brightness/contrast slider bars or other tools such as curves or levels depending on which software you are using. These sliders will allow you to adjust either the overall brightness / contrast of the photo or smaller adjustments such as shadows and highlights, but which should you use for what?

In Lightroom you have:

  • Exposure – Changes the overall brightness of the entire image
  • Contrast – Increases or decreases the difference between dark and light in your photo
  • Highlights – Adjusts how much detail you can see on highlight areas of the image
  • Shadows – Adjusts how much detail you can see on shadow areas of the image
  • Whites – Adjusts how much detail you can see on white areas of the image
  • Blacks – Adjusts how much detail you can see on blacks areas of the image
Lightroom editor exposure slider

Pro Tip: To really get your head around this, you’ll need to see the different tones on your histogram.

Step Three: Colour correction

The next step is colour correction which means changing the hue/saturation tool to manually adjust colours in a photo or you could just click on the icon for “auto” colour correction, which will automatically do it for you.

There are 3 main reasons to adjust your colours; Correcting white balance, fixing chromatic aberration and improving your photos’ appearance.

If your camera photos have a red, green, orangey fringe to them then you’ll need to use the “fix chromatic aberration” tool. If your photos white’s aren’t white then you’ll want to adjust your white balance.

Another use for this is to create a certain editing style, like black and white edits, HDR or matt finish. Colour grading is when you change the colours of a photo to create your own style. Some editors make this easier than others, while some simply give you preset filters, however these don’t work as well.

Step Four: Sharpen Photo
The final step is to sharpen your photo which will make it look more crisp and bring out any details in shadows or highlights that might have been lost due to over exposure or under exposure. You can do this by using a sharpening filter on whichever software you are using.

Step Five: Now that you’ve edited your image. It’s time to make sure it stays great. Choosing the right file format to export to and the size of the image is important. Too big and you wont be able to use it and too small and you’ll loose details and quality.
Now that you know the 5 photo editing basics, you’ll want to pick an editor than meets your needs.

How do beginners learn to edit photos?

The simplest way to learn how to edit is to watch YouTube tutorials or read articles like this one, however, if you are looking for a more structured learning experience, then enrolling in an online photography course or 7 Steps to editing is the way to go.

5 photo editing basics you need to know and helpful tips

Which photo editor do you currently use?

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