Editing images can be a minefield for errors which impact the final result. Everyone wants to bleed every last drop of quality from their shots, so here are some mistakes to avoid if you want to achieve cleaner edits.
I’ve gone through a number of stages in my relationship with editing my photographs. I’ve made the great many mistakes we all have, but I’ve also undervalued and overvalued how much editing can do for my work. In this video, Evan Ranft — a photographer with an editing style I really enjoy — goes over some of the mistakes you can avoid if you want the cleanest possible results.
One addition I would like to make to his advice is about calibrating your monitor or screen. Before I knew I ought to calibrate my equipment, I would just check what the image looked like on both my monitors as they were different brands and models, and sort of average out the best look. What this resulted in, was years later as I was shooting more and more, mistakes in color, contrast, and exposure were bleeding through and it wasn’t until a professional photographer called me out on my calibration over an image with bizarre tones that I thought to buy a calibration tool. I’m thankful I did because I would have never got anywhere as a professional photographer if I hadn’t have made that adjustment long before I tried.
