Photo editing

This article demonstrates the process of digital photo editing. By “photo editing” we mean enhancing a photo in various ways, including adjustments in exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, cropping, straightening, and sharpening. For demonstration purposes, we're going to apply these adjustments on a poorly captured photo so that the changes can be easily observed and understood. For best results, however, photos should be taken proficiently on camera first, and then digitally enhanced to optimise its quality.

Photos that contain the most information will get the best results when enhanced. Always work with the largest file size possible. This allows for more flexibility when editing, and you won't get as much noise or banding. For my residential and commercial photography, all edits are done with RAW photos, rather than with JPEGs. The RAW format is the digital equivalent of negatives for film, so they don't lose any information from the moment the photo was captured. You can successfully edit with JPEGs too, but you will be more limited with the extent of these changes.

A photo before editing

This photo is taken in RAW format, which is just as well since it requires some major reworking. What is immediately apparent is the extent of shade – it is clearly underexposed. There is a yellow cast throughout the photo, caused by the wrong white balance. Also, the vertical edges are at an angle, so the camera wasn't even horizontal when the shot was taken … Just what was the photographer thinking!

White balance, exposure and cropping

White balance adjustments are necessary because a camera's sensor is affected by the colour temperature from different sources of light. Colour temperature refers to the warmth or coolness given from the light, which can cause white areas on a photo to appear yellow or blue. Because I am working from the RAW photo, adjusting white-balance will have no destructive effect on the image. With the adjustment made, the yellow glow has gone, and the photo has already improved.

Step 1: White-balance has been corrected

Exposure is the amount of light that has entered the camera's sensor to produce the image. Although most of this photo is underexposed, other parts are exposed correctly (areas of the sofa) or overexposed (the blown out highlights on the bar mirror and floor tiling). Therefore, I used layer masks to selectively brighten areas that needed it, and left the other areas untouched. It is easier to recapture detail from the shadow areas than from the highlights. I managed to recapture some detail of the next room that was almost completely shaded in the original photo.

Step 2: Exposure is adjusted

The photo is rotated anti-clockwise and the straight edges are now vertical. I also cropped a lot off the ceiling, since it was taking up too much area. Great, now the photo looks properly composed!

Step 3: Cropping and aligning

Contrast and sharpening

Step 4: The image is then given a small increase of contrast, a second adjustment of white balance, and some sharpening. Overall, the result is a much better photo than before. Still, the highlight areas have not been dealt with sufficiently, and have caused some loss of detail in the photo.

It's a good thing a second photo was taken that exposed for these highlights. With this photo, the highlights from the bar mirror and reflection on the floor contains detail that can be added to my previous photo.

Step 5: Severely underexposed image

Final image after editing

Step 6: Combining the two photos leads to the final result. Now the image has detail in the highlights and the shadow areas.