5 Basic Photo Editing Tips

Photography makes for an excellent hobby, but often, some basic editing is necessary for stunning photographs. Professional photographers commonly use post-processing software like Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), Lightroom, and Photoshop to enhance their photographs. Read on for the top photo editing tips suggested by the experts.

Explore lens and camera adjustments

Lightroom and ACR offer great solutions when it comes to necessary adjustments. Just make sure that you are familiar with and have checked the Camera Calibration panels before making significant edits. Using Lens correction is especially recommended if you favor a wide-angle lens. This feature helps to make adjustments so that you don't lose parts of your image to automatic cropping.

Use shortcuts

Photo editing can easily become a lengthy process. While improving your pictures on Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom, opening, editing, and saving each image can turn into many hours of work. Using these shortcut commands allows you to speed up the process.

Process Shortcut
Copy options Cmd+C / Ctrl+shift+C
Paste options Cmd+V / Ctrl+shift+V

Add an element of style

Stylizing your photos can make them more vivid and make the colors pop. To stylize your photos using photoshop, follow these steps:

  • Upload the image to Photoshop and select Brightness/Contrast.
  • Change the Contrast to +35, Saturation to -25 Brightness to +25.
  • Adjust the curves layer by dragging the red line down a few points. Next, drag the blue line upward and then move the green bar up slightly.
  • Now select the Soft Light blending mode.
  • Finish the process by adding two Solid Color adjustment layers with Opacity between 30-35%.

Explore presets

Preset color settings are an excellent feature to experiment with and can be found on the left of the interface in the Develop Module. For quick corrections, navigating to the History palette allows you to undo effects and revert to earlier history states.

Use Camera Raw filter

Enabling the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop CC gives you quick access to editing layers in an image. To use this functionality, you need to select the layer and then navigate to Filter> Camera Raw Filter.

Using these tips, you can save yourself lengthy edit sessions and spend more time accepting compliments for your stunning creations.