# 7 Steps for Editing Your Photos



## gary_hendricks (Jan 10, 2005)

When editing digital photos, it helps to have a standard workflow. Knowing the right order to apply your editing tools helps you get the best results.

*1. Edit in Lossless Format*
Some file formats, such as JPEG, lose quality every time you save an edit. This is called a "lossy" format. If you are performing a long series of edits, you may actually make things worse despite your efforts. The opposite type of format is "lossless." With a lossless format, such as TIFF, no quality is lost when you make edits. 

*2. The Initial Clean-Up*
Some edits, such as cleaning up noise and correcting lens distortions, are best performed at the beginning so you do not exaggerate them during later steps. There was no noise in the above example, so this step was not necessary.
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3. Adjust the Color*
This involves adjusting the RGB (Red, Green and Blue) or CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) values. Until you learn the theory of color adjustments, it is best to make very small changes and see how they look. Often, these adjustments lighten the image and reveal additional noise, so a bit more clean-up may be required.

*4. Saturation and Hue Adjustment*
Saturation and hue affect the appearance and richness of the colors in your photo. You will usually want to increase color richness. Again, the best results are normally had by making small adjustments. After this step, re-evaluate your color adjustments to ensure they still look right.

*5. Editing*
You can now perform any final edits such as removing blemishes from skin, whitening teeth, smoothing wrinkles and so on. Often, the image areas that need editing are quite small relative to the whole picture. For best results, zoom in and work on the picture close up. This way, you will be less likely to make unseemly blotches instead of fixes. If major edits are made at this stage, some additional color and saturation tweaks may be needed.

*6. Scaling*
You can now try to apply any final cropping and resizing. Remember not to crop too close to important subject matter. If you leave plenty of space around them, your photo will look more balanced and you will be less likely to cover things up when framing. Also, remember to consider pixel depth and the rules of thumb for printing before making your photo too big. Minimum print quality requires 150 PPI (pixels per inch). Maximum quality, which is recommended for enlargements, requires 300 PPI.

*7. Sharpening*
Sharpening is the final step in the process. You can sharpen any areas that might benefit from looking crisper. The reason this step is left to last is that sharpening can exaggerate other problems. Because of the potential side effects of sharpening, it is usually best to select only specific areas for sharpening, usually the main subjects.


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## Elijah (Jan 16, 2005)

Great tipts on editing imagery in photoshop. These steps are always good to repeat.


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## Picksure (Jan 17, 2005)

Thanks for posting these tips. The more I play with PSP7, the more I learn and have noticed this "lossy" thing. Tip #1 will come in very handy, the others I had kinda figured out by trial and error(mostly errors).


Thanks again.


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## manda (Jan 20, 2005)

i think the best way to use PS is to do it by trial and error, picksure.

good tips gary!


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## meow (Jan 29, 2005)

No need to thank him. He won't bother to come back and read your comments. This person posts spam messages like this at forums all over the web. The purpose is to lure people to his web sites that span topics from photography to breast pumps  . The sites of course just serve as hangers for his many affiliation links.

This particular set of "well thought-out advice", I believe he "borrowed" from here: 
http://www.apmethodist.org/training/photog.htm

Here are a some of his sites:
basic-digital-photography.com
baby-product-guide.com
digital-music-guide.com
build-your-own-computers.com
desktop-video-guide.com
(Not linked on purpose. I don't want to add to his Google power.)

Sorry to butt in like this. I actually came here from Google to read about photography. But when I saw old Gary at it again I couldn't keep quiet. I'm just so sick of people scamming and trying to take advantage of or trick others on the Web. layball:

Oki, now I'm calm again. Let's see what you post about Panasonic's cameras around here.  :mrgreen:


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