Taking amazing photos is only the first step. Once you’ve started to learn how to take better photos, you’ll want to start learning how to edit your photos to make sure they really look fantastic. Most portrait photos only need subtle editing to make them better, but this enables you to erase any flaws that might detract from the photo and touch up your subject to help them look their best.
Depending on the type of photography you like doing, the amount of editing you’ll need to do for the photos will change. If you like creating realistic, natural portraits, you’ll want to edit lightly so you don’t detract from the photo you’ve taken. If you’re more interested in surreal photos, you may need to heavily edit your photos to create the image you desire.
Learn How to Take Better Photos Before Editing
If you haven’t already taken lessons in how to improve your photos, do this before you spend a lot of time learning how to edit the photos. Taking better photos in camera gives you less to do when you’re editing and enables you to create better photos. For portrait photos, you’ll want to learn more about lighting, composure, shutter speed, and more to make sure your photos are the best they can be in camera.
When you edit photos, you can lose some of the quality of the photo. For instance, if your photo is incredibly dark and you adjust the exposure through an editing program like Photoshop, you’re going to end up with quite a bit of noise in your photo. This makes the photo less clear and less realistic than it would have been if you had the exposure correct when you took the photo.
The best online photography courses are designed to help you learn to take better photos right away. You can start with a beginner course and then move onto courses that are portrait-specific to learn more about the techniques you’ll need to use for better portraits. This could include how to set up your photo scene, how to adjust the lighting to be what you want, how to use speedlights and when to use reflectors. The more you learn, the better your photos will be in camera and after you edit them.
Taking Photos to Prepare for Editing
The photography lessons will often recommend you take photos in RAW format, or RAW and JPEG. Most DSLR cameras can save in both formats at the same time. Even if you’re just learning how to take better photos, having a RAW format of the photo will help when you’re ready to start learning how to edit your portraits. JPEG format enables you to use the photos online or send them to friends and relatives without further editing needed first.
RAW format is the standard for photo editing. However, it cannot be viewed without a photo editing program. Photos taken in the RAW format are much larger than JPEG photos because they include more information from the camera. Basically, JPEG cameras are ones that are edited by the camera in the camera and saved with just the edited information so they’re usable straight out of the camera. The rest of the information is erased unless the photo is saved as both RAW and JPEG in the camera. RAW photos require further editing, even if it’s just saving them to your preferred format.
The more information included in the photo, the easier it is to edit without degrading the quality of the photo. Once it’s saved as a JPEG, you will be limited with what you can do with it. Major changes will often degrade the quality quite a bit and there are some editing techniques you may not be able to do at all. With RAW, you have all of the information from the camera in the file, so you can edit your photo without as much worry about the quality of the photo degrading significantly. You can change the exposure more with RAW than JPEG, for instance, without as much noise in the photo.
Learn how your camera settings can be changed to enable you to save all of your photos in RAW or JPEG from the start. You can then save the RAW photos until you’re ready to start learning how to edit them. When you do start to take lessons in editing portrait photos, having a collection of RAW format photos already will enable you to start the lesson right away and try out some of the techniques on photos you’ve already taken. You won’t need to go out and take new photos before trying the beginner editing lessons.
Take Lessons on How to Use Photoshop
Once you have at least a few RAW format photos to practice with, you might want to check out online photography lessons and Photoshop lessons. It’s a good idea to start out with a general, all-around photo class so you learn how Photoshop works, what all the tools can do, and what you can do to alter the appearance of your photos. This is a good way for you to learn more about what the program itself is capable of and what you might want to focus on learning when you move to more portrait-specific lessons.
The best Photoshop tutorials available online are going to provide you with an excellent start so you can use the RAW format photos you take and make them better before you save them in another format and share them with the world. However, Photoshop is incredibly complex and allows you to do just about anything you might want with your photos. Once you have a good handle on the basics, you may want to move onto more advanced techniques.
Learn How to Edit Portraits Properly
The more advanced techniques you learn will be based on what you want to do. Most photographers who do portraits will want to minimally edit the photos so they don’t really change how a person looks. However, they might remove a small blemish to ensure the person looks their best or edit out something in the background that shouldn’t have been there.
Other photographers want their photos to look surreal. They might learn how to edit the photos with a heavy hand to give a fantasy feel to the photo. They will want to focus their advanced lessons on ones that show them how to add lighting properly to a photo, how to adjust the background, and more. These techniques can take a lot of time and practice to perfect.
When you start learning Photoshop, you’ll get a basic idea of how to edit photos. You can then focus on more advanced tutorials based on what you want to learn how to do and what you’re interested in. The best Photoshop tutorials on advanced techniques will cover one technique in detail so you learn exactly what to do and how it can apply to your photos. Once you’ve mastered a technique, you can move onto the next one.
Continue to Practice and Learn More Techniques
You can learn a lot from basic editing tutorials, but you’ll want to continue to learn more about how to work with Photoshop. Photography isn’t something you can just master and you’re done learning, especially when it comes to editing. You’ll want to continue to learn more advanced techniques for both taking photos and editing the photos.
Advanced portrait editing lessons enable you to learn everything you might need to know about how to edit your photos. Pick a lesson and work with it to learn the advanced techniques you’re interested in. Then, continue to practice and learn. The more you practice, the better you’re going to be at both taking the portrait photos and at editing them to ensure they look the way you want.
If you’re ready to start learning more about how to edit your photos or you’d like to improve how your photos look in camera before you start to edit them, make sure you check out the best online photography courses available today. With a plethora of topics covered, you’ll always be able to find something new to learn.
Portrait photos require a lot of detailed focus. You’ll want to make sure you take lessons so you learn how to take better photos in camera and learn how to edit them properly to create the amazing photos you desire. Online classes make it easy for you to focus your lessons on what you want to learn and what you’re having trouble with right now so you can start to improve quickly.
If you’re ready to improve and you’d like to learn more about taking portrait photos or editing portraits, look at the best Photoshop tutorials available today. Check out all of the portrait-related lessons that are available so you can find out what you’ll be able to learn and how you’ll be able to improve. Easy to do at your own pace, these lessons are going to help you become a better portrait photographer quickly.
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