Editing photos now has become one of the most important parts of photography. As the eCommerce business has expanded worldwide, the scope and demands of photo editing are also growing swiftly.
Keeping pace with the ongoing competition, all the businesses are vying for to show their best. So, if you want to make the best with your product, show your potential customer that you got the best. But how do you inform them?
You can take photos of your product very easily for digital marketing. Once you have taken your photos, typically you want to make those more beautiful and attractive. To do this, editing photos comes up as a must-doing job. That’s why you need to know exactly how to edit photos like a professional one.
10 Tips to Edit Photos Like a Professional
Professional photo editing is a package of altering images, manipulating color, sharpness, brightness, and countless number of default effects. If you need to apply these changes, here are ten tips that are going to help you for editing photos like a professional.
Here we go;
1. Choose the Correct Device
Though you can edit photos professionally by using android/ ios applications but these will not help you to become a professional one. Still smartphone’s photo editing apps are mostly used for amateur/unofficial purposes.
On the other hand, if you start with mac or windows, that’s a great idea to be a professional photo editor. In these platforms, you will know and understand deeply all the sections of editing.
And there is a chance to gather professional knowledge in depth so that you will be able to edit photos in your smartphone too, based on professional knowledge of photoshop.
Smartphone is not a smart choice to become a professional.
2. Choose the best software
As you get to know that mac and windows are the best platform to do a professional photo edit. Now the question is which software should be used for editing professionally. There are a countless number of paid and unpaid versions of photo editing software.
Among these software, which one is the best user friendly software that you need to consider? Particularly for this reason most professional photo editing companies use Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Lightroom.
Adobe softwares are very popular for their beginner-friendly interface compared to others. Most of the professional photo editing software interfaces seem a little bit complex to the beginners. So you are highly recommended to choose Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Lightroom.
But some professional photo editors use-
- Skylum Luminar 4
- Inpixio Photo Studio Unlimited
- Dxo Photolab 4
If you are finicky or very enthusiastic, you may try all of these or even something else. Choosing software completely depends on your preference. Choose the best one which suits you, feels comfortable for its easy and convenient interface.
3. Have experiment with Software
You may be surprised to learn that professional photography editing starts over and again experimenting and having fun with it! So start learning with your own desires and freedom of doing just everything you want. Yes, it is that easy and simple.
Do not edit over the main file of the image. So copy the image at first that you want to edit and being a crazy one, start editing that copy without any hesitation. This will help you to get yourself familiar with the editing app or software you are using.
Check every option and functions of the software and apply those on your image to understand how it works. Make undo for irrelevant options/effects. Don’t be panicked, no one is judging you by this edited copy because after a while, this copy is going to be deleted.
Then choose a different kind of image and start to edit again by using almost every tool of software. By doing the same thing over and again, you will get an idea of how to edit photos like a professional.
4. Cropping and Resizing
Photo resizing and cropping is a very common part of editing. By the time of cropping, be careful about the focused object which has to be in the middle of the cropping area.
Photo resizing is also a common thing in photo editing. We need to resize any photo to upload at websites. After cropping the image you can resize it as needed.
Though it’s not critical, you must keep one thing in mind that a unprofessional resize can ruin everything and spoil the image. To avoid this error, always resize your photos by maintaining the aspect ratio. By cropping and resizing images, you will get started to know how to edit photos like a professional.
5. Create your own preset
One of the best ways to edit a photo is creating some presets. By doing an experiment you will be able to understand all the functions of your editing panel.
After that you can smoothly make and save a preset. Then try to create some more presets and save those to edit photos to look professional. Name those presets that you can recognize easily.
To make a new preset, follow these steps-
- Go to the Edit icon.
- Click on the Presets button below the Edit panel.
- Then Click the three-dot icon on the top right of the Presets panel
- Choose Create Presets.
- The default group for presets you create is called the User Presets group.
And then apply those presets by clicking on the name. This is actually a very easy way to edit a photo in a very short time. To make presets you need to actually understand very well about the color balance and vibrance & saturation.
6. Contrast and Brightness
In an image or photograph, colors are produced by light and weather. According to the presence of light, we need to adjust contrast and brightness.
| Slider To the left | Slider To the right |
| Decreases values and increases shadows | Increases values and increases image brightness |
Adjusting contrast and brightness is a must doing job for editing a photo professionally. To enhance the skill on this basic part of editing, you have to watch a thousand of amazingly good edited photos. That will give you a clear concept to edit photos like professionals do by maintaining contrast and brightness in an appropriate ratio.
7. Understanding color balance, vibrance and saturation
Obviously, you need to grow an image editing sense consisting knowledge on color balance, vibrance, and saturation. This knowledge is essential to edit photos like a pro. So gather some basic knowledge and pay attention to this major part of editing.
- Color balance: It is typically associated with three colors which are red, green, and blue that adjusts the tone of photo you want to edit. The ability of balancing these colors makes a huge difference between a beginner and pro.
- Vibrance: It is a vital tool that mutes colors in the image which is actually useful to make adjustments to the perfect skin tone.
- Saturation: It increases the intensity of colors in the picture.
You can drill one thing in mind that this section of editing is the nucleus of the whole photo editing process.
Unless making a professional sense of color balance, vibrance and saturation you can never expect to be a professional photo editor. Because editing sense is exactly the key section which makes a huge difference between a beginner and a pro.
During the time of editing photos, you have to be careful about over-saturate colors also. Saturating colors show an alluring view which is not professional. But beginners failed to understand these things. So keep this also in mind.
8. Removing Unwanted Backgrounds or Editing Background
Removing unwanted backgrounds is always a big challenge. You may also need to change the background for product photos or a demanding situation.
In this case, typically you can use the Polygonal Lasso tool.
- First of all, select the main object and invert the image.
- Then you can make the background as an active layer.
- Now press the Delete key.
Or, you can also cut-and-paste the image onto a new layer. After that, choose the special effect you want to make the background.
There are a variety of ways to do the same thing. You can also try the Vector Mask from the layer palette.
Editing background is not an easy task for beginners, so never be disappointed and give a strong effort. As editing skills are actually developed by the experience, at the beginning stage you shouldn’t expect to be perfect. So don’t worry much about that and keep trying to gather experience.
9. Considering choice of targeted viewer
This is very important for sure to consider the taste and choice of your targeted viewer and understanding the purpose of editing a photo.
For example, you may want to edit an image of yours and then to post it on social media platforms craving a lot of likes and comments. So in this case, your purpose of editing is to hit your Facebook timeline, Twitter or Instagram account, etc.
This type of editing allows you to have fun and fulfill your desire in any way you want. That means you get freedom of doing what you want. Because you know who are going to be your viewers and their characteristics.
On the other hand, you may have a business or eCommerce site and urgently you need to have some extremely high quality images for promotional purposes.
Further, you may have a website or lifestyle blog or something else where you need really good photos requiring a professional editing. Plus, you may also need to reduce the size of the image file to upload on your website.
In these cases, you must take professional photo editing services. So initially keep focus on the actual purpose of editing. That will help you to step forward in a proper way and you will be able to ensure client’s satisfaction.
10. Grow an own style
Try to grow your own style of editing. Make sure to refrain yourself from making any mistakes like the beginners do and be enthusiastic to grow your own editing style. Hence you know how to edit photos like a professional, keep these tips in mind and then you can do anything you want.
You have that space to flourish your choice, creativity and preferences. Your talent needs to be nurtured appropriately. All the things you learn to edit photos are surely making a shape of your own style. Because growing up with your own style of editing is the main asset or property that you are going to achieve.
FAQs
1. How can you make your photos more professional?
A: Be able to understand color temperature and lighting. Gather experience by using all the tools of photoshop. And keep practicing over and again to become more professional.
2. How do professional photographers edit their photos?
A: Most professional photographers follow the aforementioned tips to edit photos. Sometimes they remain busy with their photography. In that case, they usually hire or outsource editors to edit their photos professionally.
3. What photo editing software do professional photographers use?
A: Most professional photographers use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom to edit photos.
Final verdict
Hope you get a clear idea and roadmap to start your journey to become a professional photo editor. Try to follow aforementioned tips and practice those regularly. And try to develop the photo editing sense, which is the key point of learning professional photography and editing.
Building this kind of special sense and achieving expertise may take a long time and also challenging. But once you start to enjoy editing photos, all challenges will turn into a game for you.
