4 Basic Tips for Retouching Your Photos

Now, photo editing software is available to everyone and some special tools like the background remover tool are affordable. However, retouching images is not easy and if you just apply all kinds of fancy filters to your photos, the result can quickly turn into a disaster! For anyone just starting out, here are 4 basic tips for retouching your photos.

1- Shoot in Raw mode

If you plan to edit your photos and your camera allows it, preferably shoot in Raw or Tiff mode. This simple adjustment of your device allows you to keep a maximum of usable information later in editing, while the Jpeg format compresses this same information enormously. Remember that the more information the captured image contains, the more “malleable” it is and the more it lends itself to retouching. Moreover, when retouching images, it is very important to keep the original file of the photos or “raw file” (which is a bit like the digital equivalent of the negative in film photography). Therefore, always make a copy of the original file before you start making changes to it.

It is also advisable to create a layer with each important modification of the image. This precaution allows you to delete a layer, without losing the benefit of the retouching done before or after.

2- Learn the theory and put it into practice

To edit your photos like a pro, you have to start by learning the theory. In addition, as retouching is a field that evolves very quickly, it is also necessary to keep up to date with new products, software updates and professional practices. However, after watching lots of tutorials on the Internet, the most important thing remains to be done: put these lessons into practice. It is essential to train often in order to find, for such or such retouching, the method that you prefer in terms of speed, efficiency and rendering. This personal editing experience is irreplaceable and can even help you take better photos. At the time of the shoot, you will be able to imagine the image already retouched and therefore take it differently in terms of light, shooting angle and composition.

In addition, the habit of retouching your images develops an increased attention to detail, which is beneficial for your practice as a photographer. With your experience as a retoucher, you will pay much more attention to the composition and the background of your shots, to all the elements that could interfere with the reading of the image.

3- Take the best picture

At this stage of our tutorial, it should also be noted that retouching is not everything! In order to obtain a beautiful, even a very beautiful image, it is necessary from the start to take the best possible photo. For an optimal result, the working base must already be correct, because we cannot correct all the defects in post-production. Admittedly, retouching can bring improvements or correct certain defects such as red eyes or a frame that is too wide…

But it’s at the time of shooting that you must be attentive to avoid having to perform several tedious retouching. Shooting well saves valuable time on post-processing.

4- Do not go too far

Another piece of advice for anyone who tends to be heavy-handed: never push the sliders too far. Sometimes all it takes is slight adjustments in brightness and contrast for a photo to be embellished without being distorted. To know how to balance these two parameters, rely on the lightest and darkest areas of your image and try to obtain a pure white and/or a deep black. Also note that it is also useless to add tons of filters so that the image is more “pretty”. If you try an effect and it doesn’t add anything to the image, give it up!

You can experiment with certain combinations, but don’t use all of your software’s features at once!

In photo editing, subtlety gives better results than accumulation. As they say, the best is sometimes the enemy of the good. In the same vein, retouching photos sometimes requires precision, especially for the clipping of images. You must therefore always display your photo at 100% (or even more for delicate areas such as faces).