A step-by-step guide on how I edit my blog photos.
I’m no different from most fashion bloggers out there. I like my feed to have a certain aesthetic with pinks and earthy, warm tones running throughout – neons and bright flashes of colour need not apply. The process I use for editing my photos is super simple, I edit predominantly on Adobe Lightroom, and like the cheapskate I am, I use all the free presets and spend zero pennies to achieve the final result.
1/ Presets…
Whilst you can buy additional presets (some can be as expensive as £80 a pop!), I always choose from the same three options (which are all free): vintage instant, warm contrast and red lift matte. I prefer warm tones with no pops of colour, and all three of these work – I just swap it around depending on the subject and composition of the picture. For the below image I’ve used vintage instant.
Before applying preset
After apply preset
2 / Light…
You can already see what a huge different a preset makes – in fact, it pretty much does the job for you, I just tweak it a little further. A lot of the readymade presets will automatically manipulate the light for you, and sometimes they don’t do a half bad job, but it’s never quite the way I like it. I like my photos nice and bright, so firstly I go in and increase the shadows (to brighten up the dark spots) and decrease the highlights (this is really handy if the background is a bit blown out).
Increased shadows and decreased highlights
Finally, I ever so slightly pull up the contrast and the overall exposer, just to really bolden and brighten the image. This picture was taken during the day, so it doesn’t need to much brightening, but if you’ve taken a photo at night then you’ll probably have to increase your exposure a significant amount.
Increased contrast & exposure
4/ Sharpening
I love all my images to be really crisp and clear. Aside from great lighting, I also go to town on the sharpening and clarity tools. Clarity is a really aggressive tool, so I’ve only used it ever so slightly to 15. The sharpening tool isn’t as harsh, so I’ve dragged it all the way up to 31.
Increased clarity & sharpening
5/ Colour
One of the problems I find with the three presets I use it that it can often make you look a bit orange or yellow. To combat this, I manipulate the colour temp and bring it down a bit, towards the blue area.
Increased blue colour temp
Et voila!
No Comments