Part 5 Lesson 1: editing is not cheating

Don’t forget to use your camera this month

Early on in AYWMC students asked if I could create some prompts, like 30 Days of Composition, to keep everyone going through the editing month. So these topics are designed for you to keep going with your photography whilst you work on your new editing skills:

Lesson 1: background separation

Lesson 2: portrait

Lesson 3: still life

Lesson 4: capture a mood

The topics are optional. If you just want to concentrate on the editing information with no extras, that's absolutely fine.

This week: background separation

This is an advanced skill that comes under the composition heading. You'll remember from the beginning of the course that your images will have a subject, a background and a foreground. Your job as photographer is to place each element within the frame, and decide how much real estate each part gets.

A more advanced skill to master is making sure your subject doesn't blend into your background. There are a few ways to achieve this:

1. contrasting colour

2. contrasting texture

3. contrasting tone

4. contrasting focus (also known as selective focus, where the only element of the image in focus is your subject - achieved using a large aperture and a small depth of field)

5. rim lighting (or back lighting - where your subject's outline is highlighted by light. It can be achieved with studio lights or flash, or more simply by shooting into the sun. Don't forget to dial in +1 to +2 of exposure compensation if you shoot into the sun.)

Try some of these techniques this week.

Why edit?

Professional photographers do not publish a single image straight out of camera. Myself included, every single image that goes out to a client, on Instagram, Facebook, even just to my family, has been edited. Maybe just one or two quick tweaks, but it's true for every image, even my phone photos.

Why? Because digital cameras are not designed to produce finished images straight out of camera.

If you remember shooting film, you might remember developing your negatives. The temperature of your developer would affect the look of your final images, as would the length of your fix bath. You could also push or pull your films, to correct exposure mistakes. There was a definite human intervention required between pressing the shutter and printing the photo.

It's the same with digital cameras. The image file that the camera creates when you press the shutter is just a basic information file about colour and tone levels. It needs developing before you can print it. Here's the difference between film and digital: you can leave it to the camera to develop it, or you can do it yourself.

If you shoot JPEG, then you are leaving it to the camera, and you don't need to make any extra edits. The camera will boost the contrast and saturation, and maybe sharpen the image up a bit. And then it will throw away all the information it didn't need for that particular edit.

If you shoot RAW, then the camera gives you the unedited digital file. You have to edit it otherwise it will look flat and uninspiring; but you can edit it any way you want, not just the pre-programmed camera edit. And, if you make a copy before you start, you can edit it many different ways - black and white, high contrast, low contrast, grain, no grain, cold/warm colour temperature.

This is going to be a fairly long introductory lesson, so to save space, if you don't already know about shooting RAW or JPEG, please read this post I wrote which explains a bit more about the differences, and when you should consider shooting RAW:

What does this mean for you?

1. If you already shoot RAW, carry on.

2. If you don't know what you shoot, you're probably shooting JPEG. Check your manual and find out.

3. If you don't normally shoot RAW, consider giving it a go for this month. If you don't fancy the extra hassle, at least make sure you've read my blog post, and check you're shooting Large JPEG (sometimes called "Fine").

(This doesn't apply to camera phones - with only a couple of exceptions they only shoot JPEGs.)

What software to use?

All of the edits I suggest this month can be done with free software. I use Lightroom for 90% of my editing, and Photoshop for the rest. If you want to try Lightroom you can get a free trial via the Adobe site in your country. Some people prefer Affinity Photo rather than Lightroom, to avoid the monthly subscription.

Polarr is a fabulous free program that is worth trying this before you pay for Lightroom or Affinity, to see if you like this style of editing software. The sign up page is a bit confusing, but just opt for "WEB" to start with, if you aren't taken straight to the software. If you want to download it (paid), you can try the other versions. What is available on the free version keeps changing. Sometimes you can try a particular tool free for a month, other times it's just the basic version that's free. But the basic version is all you need to get started.

On your phone I'd recommend using just one app to start with until you get used to it. The best ones all get you to the same place, you don't really need more than one basic editor. I use Enlight Photofox because the fine-tuning options are the best I've found. Other good basic editors are Lightroom Mobile, Snapseed and VSCO. VSCO is free (basic version) and multi platform.

THIS WEEK'S PROJECT: basic edits

For every image, you should check the exposure, check the colour temperature, and crop if needed. This week, go back to a favourite image and check these 3 things. And for every image you take this month, check these 3 things.

Whichever software you are using, use as impartial an eye as you can manage, and honestly assess whether your image:

1. is correctly exposed

2. has the correct colour balance

3. could be improved with a crop

The first 2 should be checked for every single image, and the 3rd is optional. Don't forget, your brain interprets what your eye sees, and persuades you that your image is bright enough, and doesn't have a colour cast.

1: EXPOSURE

If you are using Lightroom, you can use the histogram in the Develop module to check you are not under exposed. Look where the white point is (the right hand side of the histogram). If you have whites in your image, and the white point is not touching the right hand side of the histogram, just move the white point slider until it does touch.

2: COLOUR BALANCE

Most shots taken indoors have a yellow colour cast. Do yours?

The tool to fix it will be called something like "colour temperature", "white balance" or "neutral tone picker". In Lightroom you can use the eyedropper tool to pick a part of your image that should be white or neutral, and it does the rest for you.

3: CROPPING

When I started out as a full time pro there was a fairly aggressive belief that you had to 'get it right in camera' to be able to call yourself a real photographer. The thought was that you should be able to visualise your image and frame it correctly with the camera, so you didn't need to crop afterwards. Cropping was for amateurs, and you were a second rate photographer if you cropped.

After a while, my response to this rule became, "Says who?".

I commend that response to you to use in this case, and in many others in the photography community. Honestly - if you want to crop, crop. If it enhances your life to compose in-camera and never crop, then go ahead. We can all co-exist and respect each others' preferences.

I crop often and aggressively. I see Lightroom as an extension of my camera, and I often take photos with the final edit in mind. If I haven't got the crop right when I took the photo, I'll get it right in Lightroom. (Also, I grew up with a Hasselblad and still prefer a 6x6 crop.)

Just be careful you don’t crop so much of your image away that you don’t have enough pixels left to print properly.

Getting started with Lightroom

I've put together the only 7 videos you need to watch to get started with Lightroom, in this blog post. They cover everything you need for this week's homework:

1. If you want to share in the app, join your start date’s group (eg. “June 2020”) and share there.

2. On Instagram, share with the hashtag #AYearWithMyCamera and the date for your start, eg. #AYWMCNov2020.

If you have been using the workbooks it’s time to buy the second book. This lesson corresponds to Chapter 1 in Book 2.