So you’ve set up a mini photoshoot in your home for your child’s first birthday. But, the photos don’t have the "look" you were aiming for. Would you be surprised if I told you photographers spend hours editing raw images? You too can achieve a more polished look by applying a few of these easy editing tips and tricks!
One Tap Method
Lightroom has presets you can use for free under the “Preset” icon for quick one-tap editing. Tap “Preset” and tap “yours" a few categories like Color, Creative and Portrait etc will come up, go through these and see if there are any you like. This option is one click, easy way to elevate your photos without having to manually mess with the settings. If you’d like more control over your editing follow the steps below.
I am not a professional photographer or educated in photoshop. I like to play around with the settings and see what happens. I took these photos on my iPhone with a homemade $5 backdrop and some natural light.
Let's take a look at the before and after and then I'll guide you on how to achieve similar results using the FREE version of the Lightroom app all from your phone.
Manually Edit Your Photos Using These Simple Adjustments
Step 1. Download “Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor” in the App Store
Step 2. Open Lightroom and tap the “Add Image Icon” to upload your photo to the app.
Step 3. Once your photo is uploaded, I like to tap the “auto” setting to see if I like how that looks. I’m usually unsatisfied with the result but I always check anyway.
Step 4. Adjusting the “Light”
The first thing I like to adjust is the “Light.” Tap the “Light” icon at the bottom of your screen. Once you do that a few lighting options will appear. By familiarizing yourself with these options you will learn to edit your photos to your liking.
Exposure
I like to overexpose my photos so I slide the circle to the right to increase the exposure. Adjust this until you are happy with it. I end up anywhere between +0.25 - +0.90 depending on the photo. Go ahead and slide it to the right and left to see what happens.
Contrast
This adjustment will alter the image's details and dimensions. Sliding this to the left creates a softer-looking image, sliding it to the right creates more dimension but loses detail. Play around with it and see what you like. I usually leave the contrast at 0 when editing my photos.
Highlights
This option allows you to brighten your photo without making it look too white. Remember in exposure? When you slid the exposure adjustment to the right it turns the photo very white. This option brings out the natural highlights. If your photo is too bright you can slide the circle to the left to darken the brightest parts of the photo.
Shadows
I love this adjustment. I naturally increase (slide to the right) the shadows to increase the details of dark sections in the photo and brighten the shadows. Decrease the shadows (slide to the left) to give your photo a darker moodier feel. For baby/kids photos I like to keep things bright and cheerful so slide that on over to the right until you are happy with how it looks.
Step 5. Adjusting the Color
Tap the “Color” adjustment. You will see sliders come up for Temp, Tint, Vibrance and Saturation. Play around with these settings to see if anything suits your fancy. Tip: if you’d like to turn your photo black and white you can slide “saturation” to the left OR tap “B & W” in the top left of the adjustment viewport and viola!
Step 6. Effects
Tap “Effects” and the options to adjust texture, clarity, ehaze etc. For kids and baby photos I play around with the texture and clarity settings. Decreasing the texture and clarity give the photos a soft and glowy look. Perfect for those angelic shots. Give it a try and see if you like your photos with more or less sharpness.
Step 7. Sharpening
This option gives the photo a nice crisp finish. I usually leave this setting as is unless my photo is on the blurry side.
Now you can edit photos your way! Saving you hundreds on professional photography sessions!
Money Making Tip: When you master your favorite adjustments you can create "presets" and sell these presets to other people looking for one-click quick photo editing solutions! Now let your creations fly and be sure to tag me in whatever you create. I'd love to see the results!
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Be sure to follow me on Pinterest for more tips and tricks. See you in the next post!
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