Basic editing
Editing isn't cheating: it's finishing the photograph. Film photographers developed their negatives and decided in the darkroom the contrast, density and framing of each print. Today that darkroom is an app. In the simulator you have a flat, dark photo, like an unprocessed RAW file straight out of the camera: your job is to develop it.
RAW or JPEG
A JPEG is an image the camera has already processed: it applies white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpening, then compresses the result by discarding information. It's light and ready to share, but it offers little room for correction.
A RAW file keeps the sensor data uninterpreted, with much more information in the highlights and shadows. It takes up more space and always needs developing, but it lets you recover a nearly blown sky, lift shadows without banding and change white balance with no loss of quality. While you're learning, set your camera to RAW + JPEG.
A JPEG is a finished photo; a RAW is a photo waiting to be developed.
Before and after four basic adjustments.
The editing workflow, step by step
Always following the same order stops one adjustment from undoing the previous one. It's the workflow most professionals use:
| Step | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1. Crop and straighten | Sets the final framing and straightens the horizon. |
| 2. White balance | Corrects the color cast or sets the temperature you want. |
| 3. Exposure | Adjusts the overall brightness of the image. |
| 4. Highlights and shadows | Recovers detail in the sky and in dark areas. |
| 5. Whites and blacks | Sets the ends of the histogram. |
| 6. Contrast and clarity | Gives the image body and texture. |
| 7. Vibrance and saturation | Adjusts color; vibrance is gentler on skin tones. |
| 8. Sharpening and noise | The finishing touch, always checked at 100%. |
Tools to get started
- Lightroom: the professional standard on mobile and desktop; its free mobile version covers the whole basic workflow.
- Snapseed: free on Android and iPhone, very complete and with local adjustments by area.
- Your phone's built-in photo editor: enough to crop, straighten and fix exposure and color.
- darktable or RawTherapee: free, open-source programs for developing RAW files on a computer.
When you want to go further
- Adobe Photoshop: the benchmark for advanced retouching, composites and precise local corrections.
- Capture One: widely used in studio and fashion work for its color handling and tethered shooting with the camera connected to the computer.
- Luminar Neo: an alternative to Lightroom with automatic AI-based tools.
- AI noise reduction: Lightroom's Denoise feature or programs like DxO PureRAW clean up high-ISO photos very effectively.
Editing with judgment
The most common excesses are over-the-top saturation, shadows lifted until everything looks gray, too much clarity creating halos around edges, and a dark vignette added out of habit. A good edit enhances what was already in the scene; it doesn't replace it.
Work with your screen at moderate brightness, compare often with the original and let the photo rest for a few hours before calling it finished. If you edit a series with the same criteria, it will feel more consistent.
If the first thing you notice is the editing, you've gone too far.
Exporting for each destination
The last step of editing is exporting, and the destination decides the settings. For the web and social media, use JPEG in the sRGB color space at a moderate size: 2000 to 2500 pixels on the long edge are enough for almost any screen and stop the platform from over-compressing.
For printing, export at maximum resolution and quality. The classic benchmark is 300 pixels per inch for a print viewed up close; a poster seen from a distance needs far less.
Apply output sharpening last, with the destination in mind: an image downsized for a phone needs a different setting from a printed copy.
Edit once in RAW and export as many versions as you have destinations.
Your turn: develop three photos
Using the images from the previous exercises.
- Choose three of your photos, ideally in RAW.
- Develop them following the workflow in the table, with no filters or presets.
- Save the before and after of each one.
- Show both versions to someone without telling them which is which, and ask which they prefer and why.