My 1-Step Process To Edit Pictures
I am a one-person shop around here. I write and take most of the photos in this site. Editing the photos can take a lot of time, which is why I try doing minimal corrections.
The most important step is to take a lot of photos and then carefully select the ones I like. If in doubt, I don’t include the picture, unless it represents something that other photos don’t.
Once I decide which photos to include, I edit them. I use Photoshop for this. I have a one go-to step that I use for all my photos: the S-curve.
Here is how it works in Photoshop:
- Open your Curves window by clicking on the middle lower button (1) and then on curves (2). Make sure your Layers window is open (Window>Layers). You can also go to Image>Adjustment>Curves.
2. Make three clicks on the curve as shown below. They have to be 1/4 of the line apart.
3. Drag the bottom point down and the top up, so you create the famous s-curve. This will give more contrast to your photo. It will enhance the colors, add shadows, and highlights. Be careful with adjusting too much, so your photos don’t look fake. Minimal adjustment is enough for most photos.
Here is the result:
As you can see, the change is minimal, but the photo looks better thanks to this simple step.
Sometimes (but rarely), I crop or brighten an image, but the truth is that I don’t have the time nor the will to take a long time editing photos. I don’t love being in front of the computer for a long time so I this is the only thing I do to make my pictures look better. My secret is out.
Hope this info helps!
Also, a post about how to take better pictures of interiors.
If you want to take good interior photography, you need to master the art of getting straight lines.
Do you see how bent this photo is? The ceiling and floor lines are all over the place. Same goes for the vertical lines.
This means that your camera is tilted up, so the vertical lines are skewed to the middle of the upper part of the frame. To adjust the vertical lines, tilt the camera down.
The vertical lines are skewed again.
Perfect vertical lines that are also parallel to each other.
This is what happens when your camera is tilted to the right:
And here is what happens when your camera is centered – not looking to the right nor left -:
You get one line straight, but the other lines are crooked. That was the MOST typical and difficult situation to solve when I was taking photos for the One Room Challenge! I would get one line straight, but the others didn’t follow. It took me a while to understand that this happened because my camera was not centered! Your camera has to be centered to the object you are trying to photograph to be able to get parallel lines, if it is not, some lines won’t be straight.
The photo lines in this picture are totally crooked and not parallel… what to do? Well, Photoshop, of course!
b) After you select Lens Correction, you should see this window (I highlighted in red the two tabs you will be using to get straight lines):
c) I started with the Horizontal Perspective tab. By moving this tab, you can adjust horizontal lines until you get them straight.
d) After getting the horizontal lines straight (and hopefully parallel to each other), you can start playing with the vertical lines:
e) Once you get the lines to the position you want, you need to press OK, and you will get an image similar to this:
As you can see, Photoshop uses your older image to patch up empty spaces. To fix this, you need to:
g) Select the portion of your image you want to keep, and crop it:
Here is the final result:
The lines are much, much better, and here is the proof:
Now the lines in the photo are vertical and horizontal and the picture looks much better, don’t you think?
