My editing process is...

A lot of work. I love it though, it is so fun. It really gives me the opportunity to get creative and use my imagination.

When I get home after I shoot, I first back up my images. A few months ago I learned the hard way about backing up images. I got a virus on my computer and lost at least 4 sessions. Luckily, I was able to recover them all.

All the images that I edit, are good SOOC {Straight Out Of Camera} shots. It really isn’t worth my time if the shot isn’t good to begin with. Editing doesn’t make the image good, it only enhances a good image. With this being said, I shoot in raw, which saves a lot of shots that are underexposed or overexposed. Raw is a type of file, such as JPEG. I shoot with a Canon, so the file extension is a .CR2. Raw isn’t an image yet, it’s a file that has information about the image. With proper software you can manipulate the information, changing crucial things about it, such as white balance, exposure, sharpness, noise, contrast etc. Of course you change some of this with a JPEG file, but with raw, it’s a better quality.

After I back up my images, I open up ACR which is part of Photoshop. I have Photoshop Elements 8, and I have yet to find a reason to switch to the suite version. I then adjust the exposure, increase the sharpness. It is very important to understand what the proper exposure is.

Next I open it in PSE (Photoshop Elements), I love my actions. Everything that you can do in an action, you can do manually, it just takes longer. What are actions? It’s a sequence of different layer that do different actions, such as sharpening, smoothing etc.

My favorite actions are Coffeeshop Blog’s Powder Room, Oh So Posh’s Goodbye Red Face in her Bohemian Collection, and her Carnival Lights action in the same set.

 

After I'm in photoshop, I crop the image to my liking. I almost always use the rule of thirds, which is the subject of the image should never be centered they should be adjusted to the third of the image, either side left or right of the center. Some cases this rule can be thrown out, but it should be followed normally.

Next I open Coffee Shop blog's Powder Room Action. This action consist of several layers, one is skin softening, the second is eye define, the third layer is bright eyes, and the last layer is a vignette. I skip the vignette, 90% of the time, it's cheezy.

 It is really REALLY important to remember that with skin softening and eye enhancement, less is more. The skin soft layer I use at less than 30% opacity, the eye define I use at 80%, and then bright eyes, I usually use less than 20%. After I do this step, I flatten the image.

Next I play with the color curves. This can be found under enhance. I increase the highlight and midtones, while decreasing the contrast and shadows. This makes the image POP.

I don't use Oh So Posh's actions with every image, but I really love using it for outside images.  I tone down this action, by about 40-50%.

Lastly, I use Oh So Posh's Good Bye Red Face.

This is a really simple image to edit, there are some that are much more difficult. I will post about a difficult image that I have edited soon.

Hope this inspires and helps a few people.

-Katie

Thanks for reading :)