Wedding Photography Editing Tips for Beginning Photographers

Nowadays, photographers want to provide their clients with quality and fascinating photos. The percent of shooters, who do wedding photo editing themselves, is decreasing, while the rest cooperate with online wedding photo retouching FixThePhoto Still, if you want to do image retouching on your own, there are 20 wedding photography editing tips for you to raise your level of wedding photo editing.

How to Edit Wedding Photos in Lightroom

Lightroom is one of the most popular photo editing programs, which enables retouchers to enhance hundreds of photos and do it as quickly as possible. However, the program may be rather useless if you have no idea how to properly use diverse tools and functions.

1. Photo Culling with Flags and Stars

Primarily you need to determine the images, which have to be improved. Photo culling is the quickest way to do it. Lightroom features two handy tools to perform such an action – Flags and Stars. You need to select each shot and mark it with a tiny flag in the top left corner. Besides, you can press 1-5 buttons and give a star to every picture. In such a way, you will see what images have to be edited and which ones deleted.

2. Use Lightroom Presets

There are lots of ready-made presets online: Cool, Warm, Pastel, Matte, B&W, Film, Sepia, etc. You can buy or simply download the collection you like. Moreover, it is possible to create your own bundle to speed up color correction. All in all, wedding photography editing becomes much faster if you use adjustable Lr plug-ins to enhance your photos.

3. Improve the Exposure

If you use presets, remember to adjust the exposure. First of all, do the general adjustments and then concentrate on Highlights, Whites, Shadows, and Blacks. You need to regulate parameters individually for each shot.

4. Adjust Saturation, Hue and Brightness

Be very attentive, regulating the coloring of the picture. The HSL panel gives you a chance to change each indicator separately. If you see that the picture is too light or too dark, adjust Brightness. Hue indicator influences shades, while Saturation affects the depth of colors. These adjustments are extremely important for wedding photography editing with the predominance of bright colors in the pictures, e.g. a white dress of the bride.

5. Regulate Saturation, Hue and Brightness in B&W Shots

Many clients want to get their wedding photos with a monochrome effect. They like this traditional and classy look. You can use the HSL panel to adjust gray tints of every color and create wonderful photos.

6. Sharpen the Picture and Reduce Noise

When you perform picture editing, it is better to zoom it in, to see problem areas. Find the Sharpening slider and drag it slightly to see how your picture has been changed. Below you’ll find the tool to reduce noise, which appears as a result of high ISO.

7. Perfect White Balance

 

The most effective way to adjust the White Balance is to use the Gradient Tool. Practically every wedding photo editing service WeEdit applies it to make the color of the sky or the grass more intense. It works the similar way with other objects in the photo. When you select any part of the picture, the Gradient Tool affects only this area without changing the rest.

8. Correct Flaws with Healing Tool

With Healing Tool you can improve lots of diverse defects in the picture. It is very helpful if you need to remove blemishes on the face or small distracting objects from the photo. If you have more serious flaws to correct, you’ll need Photoshop.

9. Use the Brush Tool

Lightroom has a special Brush Tool, which is very useful if you need to whiten teeth or soften skin. Its intensity is regulated with a special slider according to your needs. If you wish to finish the work faster, use the auto-masking tool. Only the necessary area will be selected and whitened, while the rest of the photo will remain untouched. This makes wedding photography editing really convenient.

10. Check Exporting Tools

Lightroom offers lots of awesome options and tools to present the finished photos. For instance, you can use this tool to create a slideshow of the ceremony and the party. Besides, you can add a watermark and prevent any violation of the copyright if you’re going to post these photos online.

H2 Editing Wedding Pictures in Photoshop

Photoshop is often called the best wedding editing software because of its powerful options and effective photo editing tools. Every company that offers outsource editing for photographers uses this software as the basic one to speed up the workflow twice. There are some useful wedding photography editing tips for every shooter to master his/her skills in photo post production.

1. Organize Your Workplace

The standard PS workplace consists of diverse tools and options, which you may find unnecessary for your specific task. Fortunately, you may delete all the irrelevant items and set the panel as you like.

2. Use Clone Stamp to Get Rid of Objects and Defects

If you see that there are some minor defects, noise or annoying things in the photos, you can easily delete them with Clone Stamp. Actually, if there is a huge distracting object in the image, it can also be quickly removed. In case, your aim is to smooth the skin, the Healing and Clone Stamp tools are perfect for such a task.

3. Try Dodge & Burn

These tools are primarily used for portraits, which will be surely found in all professional wedding portraits. You will have several close-ups of the newlyweds, so you must know how to improve the texture and the color of the skin. For this purpose, Dodge & Burn is invaluable. In case, you have some difficulties using them, find the video tutorials on the web.

4. Make the Photos Monochrome

Black and white effect makes the photos gorgeous. Show your clients the same photo in color and in Black&White. Many couples admire the elegant and classy look of such pictures. Compared to other photo editing programs, Photoshop enables you to apply such a filter in several clicks.

5. Make the Background Blurred

There are lots of tiny objects at the wedding that you have to photograph. Typically, the newlyweds want to have pictures of their rings, decorative items, the cake, and other important knick-knacks. That’s why you may blur the background and concentrate the attention on these things.

6. Add Shadows

Shadows enrich the wedding pictures with some dramatic atmosphere. Photographers tend to add shadows between the bride and the groom to create some imaginary mood.

7. Improve the Multicolor

Since a wedding is a joyful event, the photos you present to your clients must be bright and interesting. Use the color setting to eliminate boring hues and turn your images into multicolored ones.

8. Regulate the Contrast

You don’t need to play with a Contrast slider anymore, as modifying the Curves, you can achieve a better contrast. You have to be very attentive as even slight movement results in significant changes.

9. Fix the Yellow Colors

If there are any yellow or green objects in the photo, you may need to adjust their color, as they typically look oversaturated or dull.

10. Use Photoshop Presets & Actions

If you have to enhance lots of images, apply the presets or PS actions to get wedding photos edited in several clicks. As they are fully adjustable, you can change the parameters according to your image editing style.

Wedding photography is believed to be one of the most complicated photographic genres, which requires special skills and knowledge. Still, with these 20 wedding photography editing tips, you can cope with basic photo editing tasks on your own, if you need deep photo retouching or photo manipulation – address outsource image editing services.