Q&A Monday {Gilbert Arizona Photography Mentor}

I am starting a new segment on my blog! I sent out a message a few weeks ago on Facebook asking for any questions that you might have about Photography. I got quite a few responses back, so I’m going to start answering them once a week on Mondays. If you have a question that you’d like to submit, either leave a comment or shoot me an email.

The first question that I will answer came from Kristi.

What are the first few steps you take in editing. ie: resize, adjust levels, hue, ect.?

Keeping in mind that I don’t give away all of my secretsI can definitely give you the first few steps that I take when editing a picture. I alway shoot in RAW! So, when I open the photo in RAW, I always make adjustments to the White Balance, Exposure and Fill Light, according to taste. Then, I open the photo and crop it. As of late, I’ve been cropping all of my images to the dimensions of an 8×10, leaving as much of the original file in tact as possible. I just like the look of this crop personally, now that I do this, I have to make sure that I am not framing too tight when I take the picture initially, as my camera crops to the dimensions of a 4×6. Next, I run 3 adjustment layers, Levels, Curves and Color Balance. That is it. This is the basics of how I get my photos from SOOC to “presentable.” I spent 50 seconds changing photo 1 into photo 2 below. I definitely go in and take artistic license from there depending upon the photo and what I feel it calls for. So, to all of you hobbyists out there, be sure that you are not allowing Photoshop suck you in and spend 5-10 minutes per photo on every photo that you present or you will end up working for minimum wage! Find out what works best for you, find your style and stick to it! Happy Photoshopping! Feel free to leave a comment below, if you have a question you’d like me to answer in an upcoming post!