Happy Weekend you all!
How I edit my Pictures – A Guide: After so many questions and wishes I decided to give you this special thing this weekend: How I edit my pictures! Yay 🙂
So in advance I have to tell you, that I used to take my pictures with a Canon 500D and then edit the pictures on my Mac with Photoshop or Lightroom, but now my little MacBook Baby is a granny and she became a bit too slow for me to use the Adobe Cloud on her. So I deleted all of them from her and had to find a new way to edit my pictures just as good.
I am happy to tell you that there is also a Lightroom App out there and its awesome! I only use that one to edit my pictures! Ive tried and twigged and then saved my own preset in the App! So now I can just push the Button and maybe change the light or exposure a bit or erase some colors, but mostly it works like that!
I know many bloggers don’t talk about how EXACTLY they edit their pictures. But well I don’t care if there are copy-cats out there – because they hopefully cant copy-cat my creativity and character 😀
Step 1
I’ll show you a little video about how my preset works (I only use the Lightroom app – nothing else here) . And then I’ll show you the difference of the two pictures and then we talk about all the basics and specifics!
As you can see here are a lot of settings that I use. I often have to tweak them a bit regarding the color or lighting, because well we all know the conditions aren’t always perfect! But you can always see ALL the pics you edited with Lightroom together. So you can test out if the colors are right together! (I also use the App Preview or Planoly to plan my posts in advance and there I check too if my newly edited pictures match the old theme!)
As you can see the final picture is much more clear and brighter as the first shot I took. Whenever you push down the saturation you need to make clear that hands and face don’t look ashen! So I push down the colors, but do make the yellows and oranges a bit higher so they will still be there, even if the other colors are not! Otherwise the pictures will look too whitewashed. You need a little color or black, otherwise you won’t see how bright your white really is!
Step 2
But that won’t be the only go to option you have when editing. Because every picture has a different state at the beginning. Some are more yellow/ blue, others are super bright at the beginning (when the sun was good) while others are nearly too dark to edit them at all. Some have a golden shine while others look nearly black-white.
So you have to analyze your picture before editing them.
How does the picture look and how SHOULD it look?
For example:
If you want a clean white feed like mine, you should try to eliminate the bold colors like reds, dark blues, or pinks. Sure you can let them pop up if you want a bright but colorful feed. But I like my feed minimalistic and in natural colors. So I pull down the saturation of every bold color or try to change them a bit, so that they will be a little more organic. (That means a bold orange will look like a nice terra-cotta tone and a blue will be more mint colored) You can search on Pinterest for some color palettes before you change your feed. So you’ll know which end result you are working for!
What I mean is, that there are sooo many bright and clean feeds out there but still everyone of them is different and unique! You can use this guide to learn how Lightroom functions. What feed you want to get and how to archive that. But this won’t help you finding your own style 🙂
It will also change over the years. Trust me. I started with a crisp blue-white feed with only grey and blacks and blues. Now I only have white, gold and nude colors in my pictures with a little black here and there. Just as you will change over time will your picture and editing preferences.
Step 3
A To-Do List: Lightroom
As I said I only use Lightroom for editing. Sometimes I use the last filter in the Preview App additionally. I know many bloggers and bookstagrammers use about 4 different apps for editing their pictures, and if you want add a specific filter after you edited your pictures that’s always fine. But in my opinion you don’t really need that and only using Lightroom safes you a lot of time! (Also if Lightroom won’t make the pic bright or golden or whatever enough – instagram has some great settings too and I loved the “Ludwig” filter in the past!) You can also use a second app if you want special effects like flowing stuff, bokeh or grains. I’ll recommend you some Apps I used in the past:
- Color Story (Filters)
- Facetune (for red spots and everything else in your face)
- VSCO (Filters and Editor)
- Lumyer (Special Effects)
- Enlight Pixaloop / Photofox (Special Effects)
- Adobe Photoshop Express App (Editor and Special Effects)
- Lightroom (Editor)
First watch my video above again. Focus on the settings.
Second: Try to gain your own settings with a try-out picture. I like to push the brightness up until it is nearly to bright. Then I lessen the contrast, because well I hate when it’s on. Afterwards I also pull up the sharpener and clearness (Bold colors will get darker and details will get more visible. It also makes the picture more impressive.)
Then I look at the colors. Do I want to have the greens in focus, or no color at all? I go into the color menu and edit every color specifically.
Then I sometimes push all of them down and only let the oranges and yellows be if I photographed only books, or look at the surroundings like in the top picture of this post. I know that would really be a help, but some settings you have to decide for yourself and you will have to change them for every picture.
You can save the basic editing settings if you go to the whole right in the line down in the app.
There you can save your settings as a preset. So you will have all the basic settings on every picture the same. And then you edit little bits of every picture to get a different impression. (Like if you want your pictures to have rose golden shimmer, then you push the temperature regulator a bit into the yellow and red direction. if you want a crips wintery theme you use the blue and red direction. Try that one out for yourself!)
There is no specific order in which you have to do the editing steps and there is no universal guide. But I hope you got to understand how I edit my pictures and how Lightroom functions. Now try it out yourself and get the feed you really want 🙂 Have fun and always know: We all live with try and error! Some pics even I cant fix and I studied Photoshop and Lightroom in University 😀
Thank you so much for reading this post “How I edit my Pictures – A Guide” and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment! 🙂
If you don’t know how to start your Bookstagram in general, before even posting or editing picture this guide could help you:
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