Lesson 9: Editing Basics

RAW vs. JPEG: JPEG is processed and ready-to-share — simpler, and forces you to nail exposure in-camera. RAW retains far more flexibility to correct exposure and recover detail after the fact. Shoot JPEG while learning exposure; move to RAW once you want more editing control (many cameras support both together).

A repeatable edit order: crop/straighten → white balance → exposure → contrast → highlights/shadows → saturation (light touch — oversaturation is a top beginner mistake) → sharpening (applied last, sparingly).

You don't need expensive software — free tools cover every step competently. A consistent process, applied the same way each time, improves your results more than which software you use.

The edit order, one step at a time

1. Crop and straighten. Level a tilted horizon first, then crop away distractions at the edges. Doing this first means every later adjustment is judged on the picture you'll actually keep.
2. White balance. Make things that should be neutral look neutral — a white shirt should be white, not orange or blue. (White balance explains why light sources tint a photo in the first place.) Click the eyedropper on something that should be white or grey, then fine-tune temperature (blue to yellow) and tint (green to magenta) by eye. Warm light at sunset can stay a little warm; the goal is believable, not clinical.
3. Exposure. Set the overall brightness so the main subject looks right. Ignore the brightest and darkest corners for now.
4. Contrast. Increase or reduce the difference between light and dark tones. A little added contrast makes a flat image look clearer; too much loses detail at both ends.
5. Highlights and shadows. Pull highlights down to bring back sky or skin detail; lift shadows to open up dark areas. Keep an eye on the histogram: once highlights are clipped to pure white, no slider can bring real detail back, and a JPEG has much less to recover than a RAW file.
6. Saturation and vibrance. Vibrance boosts muted colors more than strong ones and, in many editors, holds back on skin tones; saturation boosts every color equally. Use either sparingly.
7. Sharpening and noise reduction. Last, and judged at 100% zoom. Too much sharpening draws bright halos along edges; too much noise reduction makes skin and foliage look waxy.

Presets and filters fit into the same order rather than replacing it. Apply one as a starting point, then go back through white balance, exposure and highlights for this particular photo — a preset built on another photo's light rarely fits a new one exactly.

When you export for sharing, save a JPEG in sRGB — the color space browsers and phones assume — so colors look the way you edited them.

A worked example

A JPEG of a friend at a beach bar at sunset, shot on auto white balance. Straight out of the camera it's slightly tilted, too orange, and the face is darker than the sky. First, straighten and crop out the empty table at the bottom. Sunset light should still feel warm, so white balance only moves part of the way back — until the white T-shirt looks warm white rather than orange. Exposure +0.5 brightens the face; the sky gets too bright as a result, so pulling highlights down brings back the cloud detail. Lifting the shadows a little opens up the hair. A touch of vibrance, light sharpening checked at 100%, and the edit is done in a couple of minutes, saved as a copy so the original stays untouched. A quick pass through the histogram tool confirms nothing important has clipped.

Common mistakes

• Oversaturating. If skin looks orange or grass looks neon, back off. Look away for a minute and look again — your eyes adapt to an edit surprisingly fast.
• Editing on a screen that's very bright or tinted. Turn off night-mode or blue-light filters and auto-brightness while you edit, or your photos will look different everywhere else.
• Pushing a JPEG too far. Big exposure or white balance moves on a JPEG show banding in skies and blotchy color; that's the point where RAW earns its larger files.
• Heavy vignettes and maximum clarity on everything. They draw attention to the editing instead of the picture.
• Overwriting the original. Use an editor that works non-destructively, or save a copy, so you can redo the edit later with more skill.
• Trusting your eyes alone on color. The Colour Analyzer estimates whether a finished image leans warm or cool — a useful second opinion after a long editing session.