Are you guilty of these top five most common editing mistakes?

Most photographers I know absolutely LOVE to edit.

They love to play around in Photoshop or Lightroom, experiment, try new techniques.

And let’s be honest, when we are first starting out, we use our editing programs to more “fix” than edit. It’s a learning process, and that’s OK.

However.

There are some telltale signs of an inexperienced “editor” (for lack of a better word), and it makes your images stick out like a sore thumb. And in one year’s time, you are going to heartily agree with me.

Here are the five most common “aspiring photographer” editing mistakes I see:

And yes, I’m totally guilty of these too. I used my images from when I was just starting out and I’m showing you the real edits I made on them (and sometimes my fixes). Most of them are not compositionally perfect either, but I’ve used them to prove a point, not win any awards!!

1) Bad exposure adjustment

There are two reasons for this:

First, when you don’t photograph in manual, your camera will often not nail exposure. Most of the time, it will end up underexposing your images, especially if there’s tricky lighting. (Remember, a camera tries to reduce everything to a middle grey, meaning it tries to make whites grey and it tries to make blacks grey.)

are you guilty of these top 5 photo editing mistakes

The image on the left is SOOC, using auto mode on my camera. Although it’s OK, it’s definitely underexposed.
The image on the right is a quick adjustment in lightroom to boost exposure and midtones.

Don’t mind the awkward crop. The image on the left is my attempt at manual mode (one of my very first)!. The image on the left I increased exposure almost +1.5.

Second, our monitors emit light, making our images seem brighter then they really are. Hence, there is a tendency to underexpose your images, because they look OK on the computer screen. Then you print them and they look horrible and dark. Underexposure is definitely part of the problem.

The easiest way to beat underexposure in post processing is to learn to read your histogram. Actually, this goes for getting it right in the camera too, but let’s assume that moment has passed.

This article from Digital Photography School helps explain the basics.

And this article from Go Digital SLR is great too.

The same concepts apply whether you are looking at the histogram on your camera, or on your computer.

2) Incorrect white balance

I see tons of over warmed, too yellow images on the internet.

If you photograph in raw, you have the ability to set your white balance to anything you want and change it to anything you desire later on. If your computer monitor is not calibrated, I can almost guarantee you are over-warming your images. Computers monitors (PC Laptops are the worst!) are extremely cool and blue, making your images appear too cool as well. You are more likely to overcompensate when editing. You’ll really notice it when you print!

The top image is SOOC. It is underexposed, but the white balance isn’t that bad. However, for some reason, I thought this image needed to be warmed up, and the middle image is my original edit almost three years ago. It’s partly due to inexperience and partly from a non-calibtrated monitor. The bottom image is what I would create today.

Some people use this as an editing technique, and that’s totally fine, as long as people don’t end up looking jaundiced.

The best way to correct this is to calibrate your monitor AND to routinely test print your images with your favourite print house.

The image on top is what I originally edited. Then I printed it. Then I bought a calibration device and I re-edited to the image on the bottom. Yes, calibration makes a difference.

3) over saturating

In an effort add colour and pop to images, many aspiring photographers simply use the saturation tool. While colours are boosted, so are skin tones, and it’s likely you are over saturating.

A simple way to prevent this is to use a vibrance slider instead of a saturation slider, or at least check off “preserve skin tones.”

Put your sunglasses on for this one! Unfortunately, I don’t have the original RAW file available – this is the edited image. Wow. Everything, except parts of the skin have been over saturated…what can I say? I was learning!

I’m so embarrassed by this image! The top image is SOOC and the middle image is what I originally edited it to. Sigh. Total and complete over saturation. The bottom image is my attempt at how I would edit it today, but it’s just not that fantastic of an image.

There are many other ways to add colour and pop to images when post processing too. Please, don’t use the saturation slider after today.

4) over vignetting

This is probably more of a pet peeve of mine, so take it with a grain of salt. I love a good vignette, but it is extremely common (and easy) to over vignette images. (Vignetting means darkening the sides of your image, which brings focus to the center, or your subject).

A good rule of thumb I follow is that if I look at my image in thumbnail mode, and I see an “oval,” I’ve over vignetted.

When I first started playing around with editing, I would literally just paint black at low opacity around my image (kind of like I’ve done on the left). The image on the right is just too heavily vignetted for a basic studio image. To me, it screams amateur!

When you automatically vignette an image, it also makes it difficult to print at any size other than what you’ve set your vignette on.

5) over softening skin

When photographers first discover the ability to soften skin in post processing, it is easy to go overboard. (Guilty!) What you end up with are plastic looking people with no wrinkles, or eye crinkles…when there really should be.

(This image is best viewed when you click on it to enlarge it)

The image on the left is how I originally edited this session. She looks like a little porcelain doll!! The image on the right shows what I originally photographed.

I soften skin on a separate layer and always reduce the opacity. Less is usually better in this instance.

Now I’ve shown you my beginner’s editing blunders and you’re well aware of the most common editing mistakes I see.

One of the best ways to gauge your own improvement is to compare your original images to those you take today. Or to go back and re-edit your early images. Remember, the only photographer you should be comparing yourself to is the one you used to be.