Are you wondering how to edit and enhance your photos like a professional? Maybe you want to know what are the best ways to edit photos. Also, how do photographers edit their photos?
If so, maybe you’re also thinking about what processes and software are involved in editing photos.
These questions have been raised countless times on forums, blogs and magazine articles. Here is my take on how to edit and enhance photos, and the photo editing software, processes and techniques you can consider and try for yourself – with emphasis on unnecessary expenses.
Why Edit and Enhance Photos?
With camera technology being so good nowadays, often is the case that photos need no enhancement or editing at all. Smartphones and digital cameras, when in automatic mode, produce fantastic results that can be published straight to social media or placed in an electronic photo album. People often do just that!
Sometimes, though, photos could do with a little lifting. Especially on overcast or cloudy days when colours are not so vibrant and contrast is quite flat. Then there are bright, sunny days when there strong shadows that might hide some details you would like to see.
Professional photographers edit and enhance pretty much all their photos. One of the main reasons is that the camera, regardless of how good it is, cannot see what the human eye sees, as interpreted by our brains. Cameras do a fair job of taking an average of the lighting conditions and setting the aperture or shutter speed for us. They struggle when the contrast between framed subjects, objects and background is high, They also struggle to lift photos – give them the 3D look you are actually seeing – when the contrast is too low.
You might want to crop a photo to focus on just one area of the image. Then you may wish to resize its dimensions to fit better with social media platforms. There are many more reasons.
Editing and Enhancing Photos with Software
Nowadays, professionals use software to edit and enhance their photos. Whether it be touching up here and there or, by way of an extreme example, changing a rather boring sky for something a little more dramatic.
So, you shouldn’t be afraid to use software to lift your photos. On reflection, it is fairly commonplace now with people editing and enhancing their selfies to iron out the blemishes, or to get a higher definition. The trick, though, is to edit and enhance photos in a natural way, so viewers can’t really tell if the photo has been tampered with.
The camera never lies, as they say, but the software sure can!
Post-processing, as it is known, is an art unto itself. Your digital camera does the processing necessary to yield a photo in a format that you (or your device) can handle to view or print. Post-processing is all about taking that photo file from the camera and loading it into some software to further edit and enhance it.
Image Formats
There are many formats used in image production, but I’m going to talk about just two – JPEG and RAW files and formats.
JPEG Format
Most digital cameras produce JPEG/JPG-formatted image files. This is a long-standing format that is supported the world over in social media, photo viewing and editing software, along with office, publication and presentation solutions like MS Office or Google Docs.
Without getting too embroiled in it, JPG or JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), is what’s known as a ‘lossy’ format. When you take a photo, in the split second afterwards, your camera will produce a dataset. From this, it generates a JPG formatted file which is written to the phone’s storage. In between doing so, depending on your camera, it may add its own enhancements to lift colours and adjust the contrast. A lot goes on in that split second! The resulting JPG file is a compressed representation. The original dataset is discarded unless you change some settings – see RAW formats below.
By ‘lossy’ it simply means that once the original dataset is converted to JPG, and deleted, there is no way back. So if the resulting JPG image, on close inspection, is too pixilated (looks like a blurred mosaic of colours), that’s all you have. You have to re-take the photo with a higher level of JPG quality, which of course, might not be possible or practical.
JPG Quality and Storage
Your camera, including smartphones, might be able to increase the quality of your JPG files. In the settings, you can often move sliders to increase the quality – usually expressed as a percentage. Some cameras might have fine, medium and normal (or similar) settings. As a rule, the better the quality, the larger the resulting file.
Nowadays, thankfully, SD cards that are used as storage in many cameras are cheap. So having the best quality setting is not too much of a problem. Smartphones are not so good in this area of late. Apple and many other brands don’t allow you to insert or update the storage, so there is a limitation. You may have to export and delete your photos every so often to make room.
RAW Formats
Popular with enthusiasts and professionals are RAW file formats. As explained above, the camera creates a dataset just after taking a photo. In many cameras, that dataset can be converted or held as a file and is known as a RAW file. Each manufacturer has its own native file format (determined by what you see at the end of the file name, like filename.NEF for Nikon).
These formats are grouped under the banner of RAW, meaning, as it suggests, no changes or enhancements. Technically, as mentioned, it is a dataset that most cameras hold briefly in memory to generate a JPG file, but a setting enables the camera to preserve the file by writing it to storage.
You can export RAW files into RAW rendering software. The files are generated by the camera’s wizardry with no or very limited enhancements. As a result, upon rendering (viewing the outcome), you get a rather flat and dull image.
The beauty of RAW files is that you can use the rendering software to edit and enhance the photo, to the extreme if you want, but you can always get back to the original, as taken by your camera. So it is a lossless format. Once you are done editing and enhancing, you save the result as a JPG (or any other format you wish).
RAW Worked Example
These images show, first, the original rendered, rather flat, RAW image. It’s not a great photo, but it’s good for this demonstration. Note the high contrast causing dark shadows in the foreground and in the distance.
Then we have the edited version – note the levelled horizon and how the colours are lifted, and the shadows are better lit. Look closely and you can see that the distant RNLI station and background cliffs are sharper.
Finally, it’s the same edited version with a different sky dropped in. If I didn’t show the previous versions, the last image looks fairly natural – complete with the two original gulls. That sky was dropped in effortlessly.
Drawbacks with RAW
The issue with RAW formatted files is that not all viewing or editing software can handle them. It tends to be the more professional programs and apps that have in-built rendering capability. Although, you can get open-source software like RAW Therapy if you would like to give RAW a go.
RAW formatted files are very large – perhaps twice the size of a good-quality JPG image. So this needs to be considered in your camera and overall storage strategy and capability. See my article: Best Photo Storage and Backup Methods.
Camera of Choice
First things first, let’s talk about your camera. Are you using a smartphone or a dedicated camera? This can make quite a difference in editing and enhancing your photos.
Smartphones
Smartphone cameras are unbelievably sophisticated today. Given the tiny size of the camera lenses and the small footprint of the camera electronics, the photos they produce are often amazing.
In the settings of many smartphones, you can set the JPG quality as mentioned above, but you can also add processing enhancements. For example, my Samsung S21 has a High Dynamic Range (HDR) switch. With it on, it will perform the HDR function – 2 or more takes with different exposure settings are created and then merged back into one – just before the JPG conversion. Pretty impressive! And that’s just one setting.
However, you may want to edit and enhance the image further.
Smartphone Apps for Editing and Enhancing Photos
A very popular and free app you can use on your phone is Snapseed (look it up in the Apple/Google stores). It has 29 edit/enhance tools at the time of writing and, recently, added RAW rendering capability. I’m a frequent user of this app and, most of the time, I choose a preset to ‘pop’ a dull day photo. I may crop to an area and I sometimes use its very useful healing tool to remove things in my landscapes.
Another is Adobe’s Lightroom. It is mostly free but entices you to pay for premium presets and maybe other features. I have this but I don’t often use it.
Both of the apps have quick and easy-to-use presets. Just tap each preset and see if it enhances your image or not. The original file is not changed, The edits all happen in memory and, when complete, you save the result as a new JPG formatted image.
Another group you can try is camera apps. Your smartphone comes with a ready-loaded camera app to operate your camera in the way the manufacturer sees fit. Camera apps give you the ability to try different controls of your camera electronics and hardware.
Some smartphones and camera apps give you a Pro Mode. This is where you can be creative and enhance your learning by setting manual controls – exposure, shutter speed, film speed (ISO) and more. In this mode, you may be able to generate and save RAW files.
Dedicated Cameras
Both point-and-shoot and cameras with interchangeable lenses tend to come with manufacturer’s software to export and/or enhance and edit photos. Generally, these products don’t get great reviews, but they will certainly get you going.
Most dedicated cameras have the ability to add storage – typically with an SD Card. This enables users to take spare storage on their travels or store the images separately from the camera if deemed appropriate.
The workflow process with such cameras is to export the images (files) directly from the camera or from the SD Card (cable, card reader or, with some, WiFi). They are imported into a computer device. These can be JPG, RAW or both formats, depending on the camera settings. Software on the computer device is used to edit and enhance the photos for the desired result. After sifting what is and isn’t wanted, they are placed into a folder or directory structure for prosperity or further use at a later date.
Smartphone images can be put through this same process if you wish to import them from your phone.
Both Windows and Apple computer operating systems come with native photo viewing and editing software. These products are usually quite basic. Also, they may not handle RAW formats. So you may want to step up to something a little more feature rich at some point.
Note: if you are trying out RAW files and can’t view them with native viewers, look up your manufacturer’s codec in your favourite search engine. This simple add-on may get you going for free.
Computer Software for Editing and Enhancing Photos
What to look for
Organising photos – some products build an index or database of your photos allowing you to organise them into folder structures.
Metadata – this is data held within the image file that is about the image. It will hold a title, description, tags, image size and, likely, details about the camera. Some products handle this and many don’t. However, you can amend metadata in the operating system’s viewers with the right codec.
RAW Rendering and processing – not all products allow this, so you would need a separate RAW rendering application if you shoot RAW images.
Layering and Masking – many applications allow you to build up layers, one on top of the other, of various edits. For example, you can have your photo on the base layer. You can then add a layer and create a mask so that maybe only the sky is affected by the edits on that layer. Once done, you can merge the layers or simply convert everything, as seen, to JPG.
Non-destructive editing – this is where the changes you make are held either in memory or in the application’s database. Once you are done editing, you can convert what you see on the edit screen to a JPG. Look for applications that save your edits. Should you ever want to get a larger JPG, say, for printing or selling, you can do so easily from the saved edits.
Presets – nowadays they are pretty extensive and really good quality. They can save you lots of time. I have used them a great deal, but I tend not to so much of late, preferring manual controls. Also, check if you can develop and save your own presets to help batch-process your many similar photos.
Manual controls – most applications provide manual controls to edit colour, exposure, lens characteristics and more. Some offer many more controls – some very complex and technical. These can be fairly easy to use once you know what they do, but some offerings can be over complex.
What’s out there
There are far too many open-source and nearly free software programs to discuss here. Just type photo editing software into your favourite search engine to see what I mean. Here are some I have used or read about over the years…
Free and Paid Add-ons
Adobe Lightroom Express. Like the smartphone app, this product is mostly free and comes with presets and a range of tools for photo enhancement, resizing, cropping and more. Adobe is a big name in the photographic and design industry, so it should be a reliable product.
RAW Therapy. I mentioned this above. It is a very good open-source (free) RAW file rendering program. A few years ago, I was a frequent user of this very sophisticated application. Its drawback is that there are lots of controls, for which, you need to have an understanding of what each does. While learning and experimenting is a good thing, some people might find it too intense.
Graphical Image Manipulation Program – GIMP. Yes, it’s a rather unfortunate acronym, but it’s an extremely powerful image enhancer and editor. Whether you wish to create something from scratch or improve an existing image, this package has pretty much all you could want. And it is completely free. If you want to learn about PhotoShop (see below), learn its features and tools in GIMP first. One drawback is that it can’t handle RAW formats. It takes a JPG and other formats and converts them into its own lossless native format, from which you build up your edits. Then you convert it to JPG or whatever afterwards. I used this product for many years, along with RAW Therapy. It is as good for photos, as it is for artwork for advertising (converting to a printer’s format) and alike.
Paid-for
Here is a range of paid-for software applications that I have either experienced or read about.
These products require a degree of dedication and commitment. They can be easy to use, but that’s not why you buy them. Smartphones and phone apps are easy to use. These products offer serious photographers professional and tailored results – at a price.
Each of these products will offer a free trial, which is worth doing before committing your hard-earned money. They also provide dedicated training via online manuals, plus there will be extensive guidance available on YouTube and other platforms.
Adobe
PhotoShop – the feature-rich Adobe product that is an industry leader. Every photographic magazine and forum will direct people to use this product. Its marketing is working wonders. I’ve mentioned this in other articles, magazines don’t boast about products without payment. So please bear this in mind. It does what GIMP does, but it is aimed at professionals who might put their artwork on the big screen or billboards or under heavy scrutiny. Some people will say it has loads more bells and whistles, but I find these are only useful if you need them.
LightRoom, another Adobe product, renders RAW and JPG files, allowing you to edit and enhance the images. It has become the go-to tool for many enthusiasts and professionals to process their works and generate images worthy of showcasing on their favourite websites. LightRoom is likely more useful to the photographer nowadays, whereas PhotoShop is more targeted at designers and publishers.
At the time of writing you can get both PhotoShop and LightRoom for £20 per month or LightRoom on its own for £10 per month. No, it’s not cheap! Which is why I always advocate looking and actually trying elsewhere first.
Hone your learning and build your knowledge and skills with tools like RAW Therapy and GIMP. Then, if you can justify the cost, move to Adobe or, perhaps, the tools I mention below.
Affinity
Serif Affinity is another paid-for suit of applications. It gets a great deal of coverage from the magazines which, again, rings alarm bells for me. Is it their marketing that’s good or the product? I have never experienced using this software but, from the reviews, I’m sure it does the job very well. It comes in 3 flavours – Designer, Photo and Publisher at £70 each, or £170 for all three. It may be that you only need Photo which, according to the blurb, allows you to ‘edit and retouch images, create multi-layered compositions and so much more’.
DXO Labs
DXO Labs produce an array of products. I used DXO PhotoLabs for several years. It is a one-stop shop for RAW and JPG rendering and editing. A feature I liked is that it matches your camera and lens to its database and renders the photo how your camera would view it. That’s a great starting point. There are loads of presets, as well as finer controls to support an easy, to complex, editing process.
The latest version (6 at the moment) appears to provide all the features that drew me to Luminar (below) when PhotoLabs was at an earlier version. So I think it will be a very close-run contest between the two now.
I use presets a great deal but, after much experimenting and learning, I’m getting better results with manual controls. PhotoLabs allows you to template your changes as a user-defined preset. This is a good feature but, despite the template, I realised I was still tweaking each photo. Sometimes it’s best to get proficient with the manual controls.
DXO also has its PureRAW package, which is designed as an add-on to your existing toolset.
DXO PhotoLabs is currently offered at £199 and PureRAW is £115.
Luminar
Another all-in-one toolset is Luminar NEO from Skylum. I started using previous versions of Luminar several years ago. Since then I hopped past Luminar AI and installed Luminar NEO.
As I mentioned with PhotoLabs, there’s not a great deal of difference between them now. However, NEO has improved by leaps and bounds since previous versions. There are some significant differences in usage too, which I struggled with. There are also things I liked about the old version that I would love to see in NEO but, on the whole, it’s really good for me. I like the results, and that’s what matters most.
NEO utilises a great deal of artificial intelligence (AI). Along with its extensive range of presets (you can buy more), you can simply use its AI ‘enhancer’ sliders and see if that does the trick. There’s one for the picture in general, and another for the sky.
Here’s the great thing, if you don’t like the sky, change it! It literally takes seconds to replace a sky. There is no need to select areas or mask things, NEO just does it – including any sky reflections! You can buy additional sky packs or provide your own. The images above were all rendered and edited with NEO.
I also use and love their noise-reducing and sharpening add-ons. These use AI to work their magic. For older images (scanned or poorer-quality digital), or grainy low-light shots, the results are startling.
Luminar, just like the others, has some great add-ons (paid-for). I chose the subscription option (on offer for around £7 a month) because it comes with all the add-ons. My thinking was to download them and see how much I actually use them. You can buy a lifetime license for £129 at the time of writing, plus any add-ons required. I guess you can see my cunning plan.
My workflow incorporates NEO all the time now. Life is so much simpler, but the results are dramatically improved. I often re-process my old RAW files using NEO and I’m much happier with the output.
Others to Look Up
I have read about these offerings…
ACDSee – it’s a subscription option but at £8 per month, I think NEO is better all around.
Canon Digital Photo – this is a freebie RAW rendering application but, apparently, it’s a technical challenge. However, if you have a Canon camera, you ought to check it out.
Capture One 23 – this is aimed at the pro market and comes in at £24 per month. It yields better results and has a better workflow than LightRoom, apparently. I could never justify the cost.
Corel PainShop Pro – the write-ups are not so good for this product – a little old-fashioned. This PaintShop – is the app that came with Windows. That’s now owned by Corel who, back in the day, gave us CorelDraw. It’s a one-off cost of £90.
Exposure X7 – this is an all-in-one option for a one-off £135. It gets good reviews and has a great range of presets and tools. It is said to be fairly easy to use too.
Nikon NX Studio – like the Canon offering, it’s another freebie for Nikon camera owners. It will render images based on how you would see them on the camera screen and, is said to do a pretty good job. As a Nikon user, maybe I ought to try it out!
Conclusion
So that was my take on editing and enhancing photos. It’s a mere slice of a very large pie of what’s out there in the photo editing world, but I hope it has given you some insight.
The journey starts by looking at your camera. Smartphone camera images can be enhanced and edited with many phone apps – free or near-free. Dedicated cameras tend to require a computer software package to edit and enhance your photos – free or paid-for.
I strongly urge you to do your homework if you opt for paid-for products. At least try it first – maybe try two or more options before parting with your money.
Photo Magazines are a great source of information on this subject. I get many for free using the UK library services, teamed with PressReader to deliver them to my tablet. Just be aware of what I’ve mentioned above – magazines get paid or sponsored for many of their articles.
There are also lots of books on editing and enhancing photos, along with specific software packages. Take a look at these books and resources about enhancing and editing photos.
Top tip: I’ve asked for magazine subscriptions and books like these as Birthday or Christmas gift ideas.
I would love to hear about your experiences with enhancing and editing your photos. Please add your comments below.
