Hi guys! Rayna and I over the past couple of weeks have been on more shoots then ever before, and one question I keep getting asked is how I edit my photos.  I honestly still edit all my photos on the Adobe Light Room iPhone app.  This was the first way I learned how to edit and it has always worked well for me.  I thought I would put a little blog together on a quick and simple editing process for people to get more out of there regular day-to-day photos! Let’s begin: 

The first step is of course, the picking process. Throughout our shoots we take so many photos (the more the merrier right), so I go through the photos to determine the ones we will keep and the ones that don’t quite make the cut. As I find the ones I like, I press the export button on the bottom left of the screen. If you already have Lightroom downloaded the app will show up in the list of share options. The app will ask you to launch the app right away or continue so I press “got it”. After all the best photos get exported to Lightroom I launch the app and get started. 

Once you have clicked on the photo you want to start with, the first thing I do is crop and straighten. Most of the time you might not even realize it, but your photo can be slightly uneven but with the straighten button it will center the picture evenly for you, to make everything look more straight to look at. Now sometimes this feature can straighten or crop to much out so you can always manually adjust it by scrolling on the dial below the photo. Once you have a good centered photo the next thing to do is crop.  Cropping is good to cut off any unnecessary scenery, people, or corners, but sometimes you can create a whole new photo from one you thought didn’t have any potential at all. Down below is a great example of a photo with some new found potential. 

After the cropping and straightening, I scroll the bar at the bottom of the screen over to show Auto, Light, Color, and Effects. Now if you are still super new and just want a quick edit over your photo you can just press Auto. This function will adjust all the minor settings and give you a decent edit you can quickly save. You can also use this function to give you a jump start and just adjust all the settings to your liking. The first thing I start with is the  Effects button.  Under “Dehaze” I adjust the settings to lighten or darken the photo which basically adds or decreases the fogginess of the photo. I go back to the Light option to start messing with lighting functions. The options that are shown to adjust are Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks. The exposure option allows you to adjust how much light you want in your photo while the contrast adds a darken detailing to help with over exposure to the photo. Moving down, the highlights option will allow you to control the overly bright spots in your photo and the shadows option allows you to lighten up anything that is hidden in the darkness.  With the white and black options, this gives you the ability to darken or lighten the two colors throughout the picture. It's good to know that you don’t need to use all of these functions for every photo, some photos may require more and less editing options.  

Next I move onto the color tab, with these functions you can adjust the specific color tones in your image.  You can easily add blue and yellow to your image by adjusting the Temp option, while the Tint option will add green and pink.  You can also mess around with both options at the same time, like adding more blue to the picture while adding a pink tint.  Moving down you will see the Vibrance and Saturation options.  The vibrance specifically focuses on the mid-tones of the image and the Saturation intensifies all the colors.  You can use slider bar to increase or decrease these functions.  Now to focus on specific colors you can press on the button labeled “Mix”.  Here it will show you 8 different colors and allows you to adjust the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of each color.  You can use this option to focus on specific colors of the image, say the sky or a smoke bomb.  After I get my colors right I head back over to the effects tab.  In hear you can adjust the texture and clarity of the picture giving it a more rustic or old fashion look to your photo. These options I don’t use very often but can come in handy for some shoots. The option I use in this section is the Vignette function. This allows you to add and adjust the the light around the edges of the photo to direct your viewers eyes toward your main subject. The midpoint option below allows you to focus the light even more on your subject.  

Quick Tip: Once you have a good edit for one photo, you can copy and paste the same adjustments to all other photos that have the same lighting to save you time from editing each one. To do this press on the three dots on the top right of the page and press copy then the check mark. 

Now these are all the basic functions I use to edit my photos! Hopefully you guys can take away some quick tips from this to adjust your own photos! Another very useful tip I thought to include are Presets. Presets are a already set adjustment that you can apply on multiple photos. A lot of Instagram/photographers will sell there presets on there website for people to buy. I recently invested in the “wedding bundle” preset pack from Wedding Rebels. They are super simple to apply once you get them into Lightroom. Just simply scroll the bottom slider all the way to the end where you will see Presets. Click on this and your list of presets will come up and you can quickly slap one on and press save.  

Thank you guys for following me through another blog! Keep checking back to see the new and exciting things that are coming this way! 

With love,

Birdi