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Photo Editing for Beginners - [A Guide] Nov 12, 2018

NeVeR_SeTTLe , Nov 12, 2018 :

Good morning / Good afternoon / Good evening to everybody that visits my thread Now get some popcorn and a glass of your favorite drink, sit back and enjoy the lecture

Some people ask me either in the Shot on OnePlus thread by @script or by direct messaging me on how do I edit my pictures. I will get on to that a little bit later down the road but first I want to say something about photography.

Photography is an art. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. So what is art? Art is what you make it to be. Picture this – You are an artist holding a brush facing a white canvas and your imagination kicks in on what to paint. Well that is pretty similar to photography. You are holding a camera instead of a brush and you imagine your scene that you want to shoot. Before shooting the scene, you have to think about what grabs your attention. Is it maybe a flower that is alone in the field which looks fun to capture? Is it a bumbling bee buzzing over some flowers in the terrain? Or maybe it’s an older person in the rain shivering from the cold? You have to decide what will capture your audience. That is the first thing in photography that you must decide to do. So, to sum it up, photography is an art which you decide on what message you want to relate to your audience. Simple, right?

Moving on, let’s take it a little further. You know the scene that you want to capture and why. Great! You take a picture and you look at the picture afterwards and you seem pretty happy with it. Let’s stop right here and backtrack. Before taking a picture of the scene, you have to think about perspective and composition. These two go hand in hand. What do they mean to me?

Let’s start with perspective. To put it simply, perspective is the relationship between objects in a photograph. You might be scratching your head right now saying, “WHAT!?” Let me expand on that thought. Perspective is a way of showing space, depth and distance in a picture. Let’s look at the picture I shot in Poznan, Poland.


As you look at the picture above, it gives you a sense as if you were standing right in the picture. It creates this surreal vision which adds depth. The photograph I shot is a two-dimensional representation of that three-dimensional world and, therefore, our visual perception in 3D does not see the photograph in the same way we see what is before us. Our world is a 3D world and we have 3D vision, in which we can determine the relative distance of the various objects in our view.

There are several perspectives:
- Linear – The farther an object is from the lens, the smaller it appears. This takes me back to lenses. Telephoto lenses “shrink” a scene. This is an example of linear perspective. (Take a look at @Bouncer71 thread about lenses here)
- Rectilinear – Most of our lenses produce a rectilinear perspective except with the exception of the fish eye lens. Parallel lines make an interesting example because they will eventually meet in a far distance.
- Height – The closer an object is to the horizon line, the farther away it is. A perfect example for this would be a landscape photo. If you have a river that is extending to the horizon and above the river are clouds – the river in the foreground is the farthest from the horizon and is closer to the photographer just as the clouds near the top of the frame are closer to the photographer than those near the horizon.
- Overlap – Imagine you have different objects that are overlapping in your frame. The objects that are closer to the camera obstruct the objects that are farther away. This overlapping gives the viewer a sense of depth and perspective of the distance between objects in reality.
- Size – Two or more objects of the same size in a photograph are of the same distance from those objects to the photographer. For example, if you place two people of different sizes, person A is bigger than person B, then automatically we expect the bigger person to be closer to the camera.
- Volume – If an object casts a shadow, the shadow gives the viewer information about the shape and size of the object in return giving the image depth. In real life, we see examples of this like the crescent moon with a faint penumbra or a portrait with a face half lit on one side and the other dark.
- Atmospheric – If it is a snowy or rainy day, greater distance equals more air through which light must travel. Therefore, objects seen at distance, may start to lack sharpness, contrast and color.

Next up is composition. Composition is the arrangement of visual elements inside your frame. A lot of things make up composition like
- Rules of Thirds
- Framing
- Leading Lines
- Patterns and Textures
- Angles
- Simplicity

Rules of Thirds – I will start out with this picture:


We are all familiar with the grid. The whole point of this grid is to not place the main subject in the center but around one of the intersecting points. It's done by simply dividing your scene into thirds, horizontally and vertically. The four intersecting points are all sweet spot areas. To balance your image, you place your main subject a third of the way across the frame.
Framing – I’ll quote Richie Norton here, “Like creating a masterpiece, quitting is an art: you have to decide what to keep within the frame and what to keep out.” That pretty much sums it up. You have to frame your objects, subjects and everything you want to relate to your audience in the frame. So whatever you think is important to you, you put it in your frame. Framing actually adds depth and gives context to your picture.
Leading Lines - Leading lines is a technique in which lines within the photograph lead the viewer's eye when looking at an image. The lines must capture the viewer's attention and guide their eye through the photo. An example is this picture I shot in Wroclaw, Poland:


Patterns and Textures – Look for patterns and shapes that intrigue the eye. It could be of buildings, objects, materials or anything you find that has a unique surface quality. It adds interest and also adds a sense of sight and sense of touch. Below is my picture I shot in Wroclaw, Poland:


Angles – Angles make the audience see a deeper and more interesting perspective of a photo through the eyes of the photographer. Let’s say you have a scene of a person who is standing with an umbrella in the rain with a long black coat to the floor. You have to decide at which angle you want to portray this person so that it will have a powerful impact on your audience. What do you want to relate to the audience? But before we answer this question, let’s take a look at what type of angles you can shoot at.
- Eye Level – This is the most used type. You aim your camera straight and shoot whether you are standing or sitting.
- Low Angle – Your camera will be below your main subject. Usually you place your camera on the ground and aim it up to reflect height, power or authoritativeness. You usually shoot like this when shooting foliage, the sky, cumulous clouds or if you want to portray an importance above your main subject.
- High Angle – Your camera will be above your main subject. Usually you place your camera on a tall tripod or with your hands up in the air to make your main subject appear small or insignificant. This angle creates a more dramatic impact in your photograph.
- Over-the-Shoulder – When two people are talking, the speaker’s face is shown while your camera’s placement will be aimed over the shoulder of the listener.
Getting back to the question, “What do you want to relate to your audience?” – You should think of what impact it will have on you and the viewer. So maybe you want to capture that person’s long black coat that is reaching to the ground – so you would shoot at a high angle, or maybe his face is more interesting so you would want to get close to the person to capture his face’s contour.
- Simplicity – Believe it or not, simplicity is one of the most important rules in composition. Simplicity simply means making the main subject stand out from its surroundings. This can be done by making the background blurred, completely out of focus or empty. The reason behind this is to draw the person’s attention to the main subject to better help the viewer appreciate it.

Now that you know what photography is and what to look for when shooting your pictures, let me talk about some tips before your finger presses on that shutter button.

Tips:

1. Always shoot in Pro Mode – I stress here the word “Always”. In the day, pictures come out great even when shooting in Auto Mode. So why would you want to shoot in Pro Mode in the day? The only reason is to generate a RAW file. RAW files are .DNG files which retain much information and detail in the picture. You can then edit your picture very easily without losing any detail whatsoever. With .JPG files, when you start editing the picture, you lose the quality of the picture.
2. Use a Tripod for longer Shutter Speeds – Anything below 1/5s needs a tripod. You can take a picture hand held below 1/5s if you have a steady hand or some other supportive element near you where you can rest your hands, but a tripod is much more comfortable.
3. Low ISO/Long Shutter Speed at night time – When shooting at night time or in low light conditions, make sure you have your ISO set at 100 to reduce noise in your picture. This is where my second point above comes in play. You will need a tripod to shoot at a low ISO and longer Shutter Speed. If you want to shoot hand held then you will need to crank up that ISO value and set your Shutter Speed to a shorter time to get a crispy picture but that will introduce noise. You can do this and post process it later but just remember that when you reduce noise in post processing, you will introduce some softness and lose some detail. So my recommendation if you are shooting hand held, see first how long you can hold your smart phone without any movement and then set your ISO value. For example, I found out that I can do 1s of a Shutter Speed hand held without any movement. Then I set the value of my ISO starting from the lowest and see how the picture comes out. Try out different ISO values and see what looks good to you.
4. Always Use the Histogram – Histograms are wonderful because you can see if you are exposing the picture correctly. When you are setting your ISO and Shutter Speed you will see the histogram change. A perfect exposed histogram is where everything is centered without clipping the highlights or shadows. An example of a correctly exposed histogram:


5. Expose to the Right – This rule is mostly applied when shooting landscapes. The whole point of this rule is when you expose your image to the right, you are preserving much detail in the highlights and shadows. This method also reduces noise too. You will have your histogram to guide you but only to a certain point at night time. At night, when you will make your shutter speed longer you will see that the histogram will go to the right but then stop even when you make your Shutter Speed longer. So you have to estimate how long of a shutter speed you need. This will be trial and error. You will have to keep setting your Shutter Speed until you see a perfectly exposed to the right histogram in the “details” section of the image. Here is an example of a correctly exposed to the right histogram.


6. Set your White Balance – I always like to set my White Balance before taking a picture. How do I correctly set the White Balance? You have some White Balance options like Tungsten, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, etc. You can use them or you can use your eyes and then set your White Balance to what your eyes see. That is what I usually do. At night time, 60% of the time, I set my White Balance manually but 40% of the time, I usually aim for Tungsten. Now, if you forget to set your White Balance before taking a shot then no worries, you can do that easily in post processing. The only reason why I do it is because it’s much `easier for me when editing my pictures.
7. Light up Portrait Photography - For portrait photography, turn off beautification mode. Make sure that your subject is properly lit. Lighting plays a major role in portrait photography so make sure that you find a light source and at night, take advantage of the lamp posts, street lights and other lights you find when taking portraits. Same applies for selfies!
8. Presets Kill Creativity (Post Processing Tip) – I like presets but they kill your creativity when editing your pictures. You want to get better at editing pictures, then I suggest you manually edit them. Manually editing your pictures will not only make your picture look more how you want them to look but it will teach you on how to edit pictures correctly within time. Don’t get me wrong, I am not bashing on presets. I sometimes use a preset but then I edit that preset to my liking. Experiment with presets too but see what you can add more to a preset. Play with the presets settings in the basic panel and other panels. Change the values and see what you come up with.

Now that I gave you some pointers before pressing that shutter button, we can continue with the final part of my guide – how to edit pictures I will be using Adobe Lightroom Desktop version to edit my pictures. If you edit pictures using Adobe LIghtroom or Adobe Photoshop Mobile, then it is practically almost the same. For those who like to use other editing programs, no problem, use what editing program you feel comfortable with as most third party programs follow a similar structure.
I will take and edit three pictures. The first picture is a night time picture. The second one is a day time picture. The last one is a portrait picture.

Night Time

The picture I picked for editing is a picture that I took of the Cathedral Twin Towers in Wroclaw at night time.


If you look at my histogram, you can see that this picture is underexposed with the shadows clipping. The reason why I took this picture like this is to show you how to turn an underexposed picture into a beautiful one.
First thing I do to a picture is to straighten it up. To do this, pull up the “Transform” panel on the right as you see in the picture below:


In the “Transform” panel you have some options to pick. I only use two of them. Either Auto or Level. 80% of times they work well but the other 20% of the time they don’t. Experiment with it and see what works best for you. If Auto and Level won’t work for you, then I suggest you use the sliders to manually adjust the picture. For this photo, I picked the Level option as the Auto option cut too much of the lower part of the picture which I wanted to be included. As you can see from the photo below, the before and after picture when applied the Level option.


Once I straightened up my picture, I move on to the Basics Panel as you see in the picture below:


In the Basics Panel, the first thing I look for is my White Balance Selector.


As mentioned in my above tips, if you set your White Balance in your camera then you can skip this section and move on. Otherwise, get your White Balance Selector tool and click on a pixel that should be neutral gray, not white nor black. Look at the picture below to see what I mean:


Once you click on a neutral grey pixel, your image will get adjusted so that the selected pixel is a neutral gray and as a result, all the color in your image will change.


As you see from the picture above, the colors changed to a brighter red color when you look at the Cathedral Twin Towers building.
Once my image has the correct White Balance, I then move on to the highlights and shadows sliders.
The highlights slider controls the brightest tones of your image. When you move the highlights slider to the left, you are making the brightest parts darker and when you move the slider to the right, you are making the same parts brighter.


The shadows slider makes the dark parts of your image brighter when you move it to the left and when you move it to the right, the dark parts become darker. Don’t get confused with the Exposure slider, which affects the whole image while the shadows slider only affects the parts of the image that are very dark and disregarding the rest.


Most of you probably drag the highlights slider all the way to the left and you open up the shadow areas by dragging the slider all the way to the right. I will tell you why this is a bad idea to expose your images correctly. Not all the time you have to do this. When the picture is underexposed, like this example picture I have, you then touch your shadow sliders and expose all the way to the right. I still won’t go all the way to the right because when you open up the shadow areas all the way up, you introduce more noise in the picture. When you have an overexposed picture, you move your highlights slider to the left. Don’t go crazy with it. Look at your histogram and see if those two triangles at the top right and top left are not lit in any color. That is how you know that your highlights and shadows aren't clipping. So in this picture, I would leave the highlights as they are. The only thing I would do is to increase the shadow areas. With this picture I increased my shadow areas to the value 70. As you can see from my picture below, the darker areas are a little bit more lit.


As you can see in the lower part of the picture, there was already noise in the before image and when I opened up the shadows I introduced more noise. (That is why in my tips section, I gave you guys a tip to expose to the right without clipping the highlights.) You would get less noise and more detailed picture. Now let’s work on this picture some more.
The next thing I do is take care of the Whites and Blacks sliders.
The Whites slider is related to the highlights but has a different impact on your picture. When you move the Whites slider to the right, you are making the white parts more pure white. (Tip: Hold down the ALT key and drag the Whites slider to the right. As you start moving the slider you will see that your image will turn all black and when going further to the right you might see some colorful dots appear. When those colorful dots appear, that means you are on the verge of clipping your highlights.)


The Blacks slider affects how the darkest parts of your picture render. Most of the times, I move the slider to the left to give my pictures a more realistic punch but sometimes, you want to move it to the right to make the blacks more subtle. Play with this in your own leisure and see what kind of effect you want to deliver in your picture. (Tip: In my opinion, most of the times, I do want the Black level to be slightly clipped. The reason is simple – To make the darkest parts darker, which gives depth to your picture.)


Looking at my picture, I left the White Slider alone because when I moved it to the right, I already saw some highlights clipping starting to show at the value +3. So, next, I adjusted my Blacks Slider to the left because when I moved it to the right, there was already a lot of clipping in the shadows, so in order to take some clipping away, I moved it to the value +25 which gave me a more subtle look when you look at the bottom of the picture on the road. You can see some road but in the before image, you clearly couldn't see the road that well. Now let’s see how the picture looks before and after:


If you look at the above picture, you can already see some differences between these two pictures. Now, I leave everything else in the Basic’s Panel alone and will come back to this at a later stage.
Next, let's go to the Tone Curve.


By looking at the Tone Curve, you may be asking yourself a question: What’s the difference between adjusting highlights, shadows, blacks and whites in the Basics Panel compared to the Tone Curve Panel? My answer to you is this: Think of the Tone Curve Panel as an extension to the Basics Panel. It gives you more control over the tone and contrast. Remember, that whatever you do in the Tone Curve Panel won’t affect your Basic Panel adjustments. It is a separate panel for fine tuning your image further.