Are you new to photo editing and finding it all a little bit daunting? The fact that editing photos has a learning curve is no secret, and it will require quite a decent amount of experience before you can improve your photos reliably.
The best way to get that experience is to jump in headfirst and start to edit your photos – but it may help to have some guidance so that you can improve them more effectively:
The crop tool is a simple feature that is present in all editors and will let you remove parts of the frame from your photo. It is far more potent than you may realize however, as by altering the frame you can improve the composition of your photos as well.
Crop using the rule of thirds
That is why you should use the crop tool in conjunction with composition techniques such as the rule of thirds. As you crop your frame and create a new frame, try to line up the subject based on the gridlines and intersection points in a three by three grid.
In some cases the grid may appear as part of the crop tool, or in others you may need to enable it separately.
Adjust the white balance
Due to the lighting conditions when you snapped the photo, its white balance may be a bit off – and should be corrected so that it looks closer to what it is more true to life. In most editors there should be an automated tool to improve the white balance, and often all it will require is a single click.
It may help to try adjusting the color parameters manually as well, to fine tune the white balance and colors further. By adjusting each parameter you will start to understand the effect it has on your photos.
Sharpen the photo to reveal details
If the photo is slightly blurred or there are details that are obscured you can try to sharpen it. Typically the sharpen tool will have a ‘strength’ setting that you can adjust depending on the amount that you want to sharpen it by.
When you sharpen the photo, try to experiment a little with different strengths. In particular you should observe how sharpening a photo too much can make it look grainy, and try to find a good balance for it.
As you can see none of the tips listed above are hard to implement, and you can use them with practically any photo editor. Ideally you should try to find a photo editor that is intuitive and user-friendly however, and for example you could check out Movavi Photo Editor.
The more you edit photos, the more quickly you’ll become familiar with the tools that are in your editor. Be sure to experiment with as many of them as possible, and you should find that in no time photo editing doesn’t appear nearly as daunting as it did when you first started out.
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