Thing #3 Working with Digital Photos

Digital photo processing and sharing has come a long way since the dinosaur days of Photoshop. Everything is mostly automated and easy to edit with website digital photo platforms. Sites like picMonkey, Pixlar, Fotoflexer, Google photos (formerly Picasa) are all image editing and organizing platforms you can utilize to enhance your digital photo library. Below is a list and overview of the top 10 image editing processes that you can do to manually edit your digital photos.

OVERVIEW: TOP 10 POST-PROCESSING STEPS FOR DIGITAL PHOTOS

Each is listed roughly in the order that they should be applied:

1. White Balance - temperature and tint adjustment editing.
2. Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery.
3. Noise Reduction - during RAW development or using external software.
4. Lens Corrections - distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberrations.
5. Detail - capture sharpening and local contrast enhancement.
6. Contrast - black point, levels and curves tools.
7. Framing - straighten and crop.
8. Refinements - color adjustments and selective enhancements.
9. Resizing - enlarge for a print or downsize for the web or email.
10. Output Sharpening - customized for your subject matter and print/screen size.

Example of a photo editing with exposure and noise reduction with sharpening and detail.

Example of photo editing using contrast, white balance refinements and sharpening processes.