Unless your the God of photography, all photos need a little bit of help, and your post processing stage is going to allow you to put those finishing touches on your photo to make it just right.
Im going to first review the three programs I use for post processing, and then I will show you a few important techniques on correcting your photos on the computer.
1. Adobe Photoshop
This is probably the most common post processing program that most professionals use. It is tricky to learn, but is a valuable program if your interested in turning pro. Luckily, there is tons of websites out there offering free tutorials, advice and forums for begginers. I love photoshop, but even I haven't learned all there is to it. It is also an expensive program. Its worth the price, don't get me wrong, but if your just starting out and don't have the 1000$ to shell out on this program, I will tell you a great free service to use below.
2. Adobe Lightroom
Designed specifically for photographers, Lightroom is a fast, and efficient way to correct photographs. This program differs from Photoshop because while you can still add some special effects with Lightroom, Photoshop gives you more freedom to creatively manipulate photographs. Lightroom mainly allows you to fix, adjust and edit your photos. I work a lot in Lightroom because most cases i am just trying to add little effects to my photos, or minor fixes. Again, this program is expensive but worth the money. I would definitely start with Lightroom if you are going to spend money on one editing program, its easy to learn, and is quick and does its job and does it well.
3. Free- Picnik
Picnik is where i started. Its a free online photo editing site. It has two versions, pro and standard. I recommend getting the pro. Its 25$ for the whole year, and you have access to retouching, makeup effects, seasonal effects, and tons more. The pro version gives you access to so much, and it has a lot of things that Photoshop has as well so its a great place to start, and hello? Its free! I love picnik, it was where I started off at, and honestly, from time to time I still use it. I keep renewing my pro account because even if I don't use it as much for photo editing, I still utilize it for business card designs, web design and banners.
Now I would like to teach you the most important steps in post processing. Since i am assuming most beginners do not have access to Lightroom or Photoshop, I will go ahead and show you these steps in Picnik since its a free, online service that everyone has access to.
Here is a picture I took of my son, no processing at all. Straight from my camera.
What you will need to do is increase your exposure, and also adjust the contrast until your photo is brighter and to where you like it.
Next, I adjusted the saturation because my photo was a little on the warm side. This is similar to if you were adjusting your white balance to add just the right amount of cool tones into your photo.
My photo looks pretty good now, but I would like to focus more on Jonah's face, and eliminate some of the background. So I then will crop the photo so that the focus is more on his smile :)
Now that the photo has been edited, you can either leave it the way it is or even add a special effect. I love black and white photo's where the eyes still have color to them. Since Jonah has such beautiful eyes, I decided to make this photo black and white , but still leaving the color in his eyes. Stay tuned as I will be posting a tutorial on how to achieve this effect!
Voila! A beautiful photo all completed :)
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