Photoshop How To

Let’s face it, most of the time, photos can look pretty bland when you see them straight out of the camera. And it’s no secret that even the best photographers do some editing in post-production to make so-so images look beautiful.

In short, editing your photos in software is not a crime, in fact, it’s a critical part of the imaging process. No one knows this better than Pierre T. Lambert who espoused the importance of photo editing in his video on “3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting in Photography.”

Now, Lambert is back with a new video (below) specifically on photo editing that’s titled “Take Your Photos from Zero to Hero! Edit Like a Pro.”

“Taking better photos is a huge important part of photography but editing is another one not enough people grasp,” he says. “I'm not talking about using filters for Instagram - I'm talking about editing images fully on Lightroom.

“For the best non-destructive edits here is my step by step guide to editing photos:

• Start by fixing your white balance correctly

• Set the exposure to a correct level if you happened to shoot under or overexposed

• Apply your Lightroom preset or

• Adjust the Tone Curve adjustments to your liking - this is where you should do most of your work

• Adjust the highlight/shadow/white/dark in the first tool panel

• Move to the calibration panel at the bottom and tweak the colors to your liking. Note that this will adjust how the primary colors are being interpreted in the whole image. You are adjusting how RGB is being displayed - so it will change the magenta, cyan etc... all the colors created from RGB

• In your HSL panel adjust the colors to get the vibe and style you are going for. Note that here when you adjust a color it only adjusts that specific color and nothing else. Set the hue, saturation and luminance (how bright/dark) of your colors

• Go for local adjustments to either remove elements distracting / crop / dodge-burn / affect individual areas”

Watch his video below to see how he applies all these Lightroom tips. The best part about it is it’s not that hard and you’ll see your images go from “zero to hero” in no time.

You can watch more of Lambert’s helpful videos on his YouTube channel.