After mastering your camera, exposure principles, and composition, it’s time to study basic photo editing to complete your artistic vision. 

Even basic editing techniques can improve your photos and make them attractive. Advanced editing software includes these fundamental features and enhancements for more advanced editing. 

The basic photo editing steps can be done on some images, but they should be done in order. With this article, you can start basic photo editing with these tips.

6 Basic Photo Editing Tips

1. Clean up And Crop Your Picture

• Straighten The Photo: Although it’s best to focus on ensuring your horizon is horizontal when you shoot, straightening is a simple first step in editing.
• Spot-Clean The Photo: The outdoors is a dusty environment, and the rough components of nature get into your camera lens and onto your images. Regular lens cleaning in the field can help reduce this. Most editors have spot-removal tools. Programs can also highlight locations by adjusting the photo perspective. Work meticulously around your image until it’s spotless.
• Crop The Photo: It’s preferable to crop to fix minor compositional issues, such as distracting things at the frame’s edge or slightly moving your subject.

2. Adjust White Balance

White balancing can restore unnatural color tones in your image. JPG files have limited white balance adjustment since they capture less digital data than RAW files.

Most editing tools have preset modes like “flash,” “daylight,” and “cloudy” to better match the image’s lighting. Many contain “temperature” and “tint” sliders to adjust image lighting.

3. Adjust The Exposure And Contrast

• Adjusting The Exposure: This is the process of making the shot as bright or dark as you like. Brightness increases “noise.” It’s best to get exposure right when you shoot the photo.
• Adjusting The Contrast: Dark-to-light contrast. When it’s exceedingly high, all colors are very dark or light. A flat image appears when it’s low. A medium contrast avoids such extremes; you can adjust the contrast to get either effect.
• Using The Photo Histogram: When a photo has a lot of dark or light areas, the histogram can aid. Most editing programs include it on the exposure screen for easy reference. Histograms are also helpful for photography. Your camera’s backlit LED screen can make images appear brighter. On a tricky exposure, look at the histogram and alter exposure settings to get a more extensive range of tones and enough tones in the dark and light sections.

4. Adjust Color Vibrancy And Saturation

After adjusting the white balance, use saturation and vibrancy to enhance photo colors. Vibrance increases the neutral color intensity and maintains brilliant color intensity. Saturation intensifies all colors. Bright hues make photos dramatic.

5. Adjust The Sharpness

Image sharpening improves clarity. Many programs include multiple sharpeners. Adjust overall sharpness first (on a scale from 0 to 100). Start at 50% and modify to your preference.

6. Finishing And Share Photos

Set images aside after editing. Check them later to see if you like them. If not, edit again. Before emailing, posting, sharing, or printing modified photographs, you must convert RAW files to JPGs due to their size. Save all altered photos and their originals.

These basic photo editing tips can improve your images and be enjoyable. If you need help with photo or video editing, ConceptDrop is here to help!