Best ideas for post-processing You may be a professional photographer with an impressive portfolio and years of experience to back you, but do you think that your snaps in the raw format are enough to grab you deserved recognition and clients. If so, it‟s a misconception. Even when you snap perfectly, unwanted elements may sneak in, lighting may deceive or shaking may happen. So, the photos must be subjected to processing before final submission to clients. Postprocessing basically involves editing of snapped photos for creating the final, retouched product. See some of the most recommended actions as well as photography post processing tips for editing fundamentals to complex tweaking.
File formats and editing tools While shooting in .jpg mode, you can specify image profiles pertaining to contrast, saturation, and sharpness to be applied by the camera to captured picture. It is recommended that the image be shot in „Raw‟ mode so that you can edit the image to your preferences overriding camera pre-sets. Adobe Lightroom is an authoritative tool for carrying out complicated photo management and digital photography editing actions. IPhoto for Mac is common on Apple platform but it impedes the migration of edited photos to other sophisticated platforms for further processing. Picasa, Google’s free photo editing app, is simple to use and facilitates lots of complex editing. Snapseed by Google, for Android and iOS mobile platforms, is a free tool that comes bundled up with incredible editing features.
There is nothing called standard tool for
photography professionals. Different scenarios demand different tools to work with.
1. Cropping
Crop tool facilitates changing of image‟s aspect ratio and size to help publish in various formats. A picture can be cropped into square form from rectangular form. You need to select the „Crop‟ tool, specify the area to be kept with mouse/ swipe and then changes are to be applied. The tool‟s application is almost similar across various editing platforms available.
2. Levelling
Forgetting to level the imageâ€&#x;s horizon line is annoying but can be resolved with cutting edge tools offered by photo editors. Levelling of a shot can have issues if the camera is balanced improperly. The eye picks up this deformity easily. The level tool in Lightroom is embedded in crop tool wherein rotating the image allows levelling adjustment. The level tool causes the image to be covered with grid for accurate alignment In Snapseed, Rotate command accomplishes the desired levelling. The aesthetic quotient of the image can be enhanced with levelling and the intended effect can be achieved within seconds for improving your photography.
3. Vignetting
Vignetting involves darkening or lightening certain parts of the picture to divert the attention to its theme. Certain tools force the Vignetting effect to take place along the corners only whereas tools available in Lightroom and Snapseed allows for selective retouching of the image.
The editable area „Center Size‟ can be enlarged or shrunk. „Inner Brightness‟ allows brightening of selected area whereas „Outer Brightness‟ allows darkening of area outside edited area. The same can be done in reverse manner. Vignetting is ideal for portraits.
4. Shadows and Highlights
An image‟s dark patches are referred to as „shadows‟ whereas brighter parts are called „highlights‟. The „Shadow‟ and „Highlight‟ tool is meant for altering the aforesaid parameters. The tool provides exceptional results on raw images as compressed .jpg image causes information pertaining to these parameters to be largely discarded for reducing the size. Snapseed photo editing software makes the tool available within „Tune Image‟ setting. Proper adjustment allows reducing the brightness of overexposed patches and diverting focus on shadows. Drastic shadow brightness increase can lead to revealing of too much noise, thus rendering the image colour distastefully saturated.
5. Contrast adjusting
Contrast demarcates the lighter and darker image parts. The demarcating line becomes more distinct by enhancing contrast. Silhouetting factor is sometimes increased by tweaking contrast above 20 (not desirable in all images). Adjustment of contrast is vital to assure good quality pictures. If you have sound ideas for post-processing, you will easily sense the level of alterations needed and this is too crucial.
6. Colors
Adjusting colours allows altering snap‟s warmth w.r.t colour, hue and saturation of particular colours. „Saturation‟ tool alters intensity of colour and zero saturation leads to black and white picture. Overwhelming colour intensity can be achieved with optimum saturation. You have to tweak the saturation slider optimally to strike the perfect balance and confer on the image a natural look. Saturation option is available in Lightroom‟s basic adjustments panel and under Snapseed‟s “Tune Image”.
7. Correcting blemishes
You can easily weed out unwanted blemishes from the image with healing tool which offers best results for tiny, distinct blemishes enveloped by colour uniformity. The healing tool replaces the blemish with colour from surrounding portion after doing needful calculations. The result is thus obtained is impeccable. This tool can be used for removing any kind of blemishes and can turn out to be very useful to achieve precision. For attaining perfection, post processing is inevitable and hence it must not be overlooked, no matter how much expertise you have as a photographer. Professional photography editing companies make available to you stellar quality image enhancement services and the investment would really be worthy if you zero in the best service provider.