My editing philosophy, in plain words
Here is my standpoint, as simply as I can say it. My editing stays closer to the original. I do not over-edit. I enhance the important things, I create separation between the people and everything around them, and when I am done, the photo should not look "edited" at all.
That sounds simple. It is the hardest part of the job. Here is what sits behind it.
A dad threw his little girl up in the air, and for one second she was flying. Her arms out, her little bow still in place, his hands up and ready to catch her, his eyes never leaving her face. I pressed the shutter at 105mm, f/1.4, ISO 200, 1/500, and the camera gave me a good photo.
Honest confession: the shutter speed should have been faster than 1/500. But this was a spontaneous shot. The dad suddenly decided to throw her up, and I just took it. I probably could have asked him to do it again, but her mom might not have been happy with it. I like the spontaneity. A little imperfection here and there is okay, and sometimes that is exactly what makes the photo real.
Then people ask me the same question they always ask: what preset did you use?
No preset. No filter. No fake sky. And that is the whole point of this post.
I want to show you exactly how I edit, starting with what I believe about editing, and then going slider by slider through this one photo, with what I did, how I did it, and why. If you are learning to edit, you can follow along with one of your own photos. If you are a client wondering what happens to your photos after the shoot, this is your answer too.
Step 0
The before photo
Look at the before photo first. Nothing is badly wrong with it. But the background is brighter than the people, so your eye wanders off into the trees. The dad's face is a little dark. The green is flat, the denim overalls look washed out, and the whole frame feels a touch hazy, like looking through a thin curtain.
My rule for every edit is simple. Fix the whole photo first, then fix the people and the place separately. Global first, local second. And no slider gets pushed far unless I have a reason.
Step 1:
The Basic panel, the foundation
What: White balance, exposure, highlights and shadows, and the overall colour strength. This is where most of the photo gets fixed, and it is the least exciting part. That is the point.
How: Temp 4,727, Tint +14. Exposure -0.40. Contrast -2. Highlights -23. Shadows +17. Whites 0. Blacks -16. Texture +5, Clarity 0, Dehaze +12. Vibrance 0, Saturation -9.
Why: White balance first, always. The day was green and a little cool, so I set the temperature to keep the skin honest. If the white balance is wrong, every colour after it is wrong too. Exposure -0.40 because the background was brighter than the people, so I brought the whole frame down a little. Highlights -23 because the dad's white shirt and the baby's white top were blowing out, and pulling the highlights down brought the detail back. Shadows +17 opened up the dad's face and the shadows under the trees. Blacks -16 keeps the darks rich without crushing them. Contrast -2, just a touch softer, because this is a tender moment, not a dramatic one. Dehaze +12 cut through the light haze in the air. I kept Clarity at zero because I did not want hard edges on a soft moment. And Saturation -9 because the green was shouting. Turning it down a little lets the green sit back and the people come forward.
Nothing here is dramatic. That is how a foundation should feel.
Step 2:
The Tone Curve, a gentle nudge
What: A small S curve. I lifted the shadows a touch and pulled the highlights down a touch. That is all.
How: A gentle S, barely there.
Why: A big S curve would have made this photo punchy and contrasty. I did not want punchy. I wanted soft. So the curve stays gentle. Beginners, this is a good habit: if you can barely see what the curve did, it probably did the right amount. The curve is a seasoning, not the main dish.
Step 3:
Colour Mixer, fixing the green and the denim
What: Adjusting individual colours one at a time, instead of pushing the whole photo's saturation up and down.
How: Hue: Green +2. Saturation: Yellow -1, Green +4, Blue +23. Luminance: Orange +8, Green +1.
Why: This is where the photo starts to look like the day actually looked. The blue is the big one. Those little denim overalls are the heart of this photo, and in the before shot the denim looked grey blue and tired. Blue Saturation +23 brought the denim back to life. The green got a small lift too, +4, so the trees feel alive without going neon. Green Hue +2 moves the green away from yellow and toward the fresh green I saw that day.
And here is the trick most people miss. Skin lives in the orange channel. Orange Luminance +8 brightens the skin a little without touching anything else in the photo. When the skin looks dull, do not brighten the whole photo. Brighten the orange.
Step 4:
Color Grading and Calibration, the mood
What: Adjusting individual colours one at a time, instead of pushing the whole photo's saturation up and down.
How: Hue: Green +2. Saturation: Yellow -1, Green +4, Blue +23. Luminance: Orange +8, Green +1.
Why: This is where the photo starts to look like the day actually looked. The blue is the big one. Those little denim overalls are the heart of this photo, and in the before shot the denim looked grey blue and tired. Blue Saturation +23 brought the denim back to life. The green got a small lift too, +4, so the trees feel alive without going neon. Green Hue +2 moves the green away from yellow and toward the fresh green I saw that day.
And here is the trick most people miss. Skin lives in the orange channel. Orange Luminance +8 brightens the skin a little without touching anything else in the photo. When the skin looks dull, do not brighten the whole photo. Brighten the orange.
Step 5:
The masks, where the real edit happens
Here is the part I want you to remember. I used to edit the whole photo at once. Then I learned to edit the people and the place separately, and everything changed. Lightroom's masking tools let me do that in seconds now. One mask for the people, one mask for everything around them, and each one gets exactly what it needs.
Mask 1: Light up the subject
What: A subject mask, just the dad and the baby, brightened on their own.
How: Highlights +16, Shadows +4, Whites +12.
Why: The people were darker than the background, so I lit them up separately. Highlights +16 brings the light back to their faces and the white clothes. Whites +12 gives the little shoes and the dad's shirt a gentle lift. Shadows +4, just enough to open the dad's face a little more. Nothing else in the photo changes. Only the people get brighter. That is the power of a mask.
Mask 2: Darken and soften the background
What: The same mask, inverted, so it affects everything except the people.
How: Texture -21, Clarity -6, Dehaze +16.
Why: The background was competing with the baby. It does not need to be sharp. Texture -21 and Clarity -6 soften it, so the trees melt a little and your eye has nowhere to go except to the two of them. Dehaze +16 keeps it from going muddy while it softens. Think of it like this. The subject gets sharp and bright. The background gets soft and quiet. That contrast is what makes a flat photo feel three dimensional.
One warning from experience: check the edges. Zoom in around hair and little hands. If the background treatment spills onto the people, or the mask misses a piece of them, it will look wrong even if you cannot say why. And always step back and look at the whole frame. The people and the background still have to look like they belong in the same place, on the same day, in the same light.
Mask 3: The soft, cool glow
What: A radial mask around the people, with the subject subtracted out of it, so it affects the light around them but not them.
How: Exposure +0.56, Shadows +13, Whites +42, Blacks -11, Temp -7, Tint -23, Saturation +16, Texture -83, Clarity -68, Dehaze -69.
Why: This is the big one, and it is the opposite of the warm glow I used on my fall family photo. That day was golden, so the glow was warm. This day was green and soft, so the glow is cool. Temp -7 and Tint -23 push it toward cool blue green, and Saturation +16 keeps it alive.
Texture -83, Clarity -68, Dehaze -69. Those numbers look extreme, and they are, on purpose. Pushing all three far down turns ordinary light into a soft glow, like light coming through the trees. It only works because the mask excludes the people. Their faces stay sharp and warm while the light around them goes soft and cool.
Warm people, cool glow. That is the whole look of this photo, and it is colour theory doing the work. Warm advances, cool recedes. The warm skin steps forward out of the cool green, and the photo gets depth without a single fake thing in it.
Mask 4: Centre focus, the vignette
What: A radial mask, subject subtracted again, darkening the edges.
How: Exposure -0.34. One slider.
Why: Darken the edges a little, so the eye stays in the middle, on the dad and the baby. A vignette should be something you feel, not something you see.
At -0.34, you feel it.
My editing philosophy, in plain words
Here is my standpoint, as simply as I can say it. My editing stays closer to the original. I do not over-edit. I enhance the important things, I create separation between the people and everything around them, and when I am done, the photo should not look "edited" at all.
That sounds simple. It is the hardest part of the job. Here is what sits behind it.
Putting it together: three separations
Step back and look at what the whole edit actually did. It built three separations, all pointing your eye to the same place.
Light separation: the people are brighter, the background is darker at the edges. Your eye goes to the light.
Colour separation: the people are warm, the world around them is cool. Warm comes forward, cool steps back.
Sharpness separation: the people are sharp, the background is soft. Your eye goes to what is in focus.
None of those three is a big move on its own. Together, they are the whole edit. And none of them changes what happened that day. The dad still threw his little girl in the air. She still flew for a second. The edit just makes sure you look at that, and nothing else, first.
What I did not do
No preset. No fake sky. No skin smoothing, the baby's skin and the dad's skin are exactly as they were. No heavy anything. The biggest moves in this edit are in the glow mask, and even that only touches the background.
Most of the sliders moved less than 20. Small moves, big difference. That is the whole edit, and that is the whole philosophy. If you can see the editing, I did too much.
In a nutshell
1. The camera already did most of the work.
A good photo is made when I press the shutter, not when I open Lightroom. The light, the moment, the expression, the composition- that is the photo. Editing cannot rescue a boring frame, and it should not have to. My job in Lightroom is to finish what the camera started, not to invent something new. If an edit changes the photo into a different photo, I have gone too far.
2. The best edit is the one you don't notice.
There is a name for this among editors now: invisible retouching. The idea is simple. If the first thing you notice is the edit, the edit is too loud. A good edit is felt, not seen. You look at the photo and you feel the moment, you don't think about the sliders. That takes more skill than over-editing ever did, because over-editing is easy. Anybody can push a slider to 100. Knowing when to stop, and what not to touch at all, that is the craft.
3. Enhance what matters, quiet the rest.
Every photo has one thing that matters most. In this photo, it is two people and the trust between them. Everything else, the trees, the light, the grass, is there to support them, not to compete with them. So my whole edit is built around one question: does this make the people stand out, or does it distract from them? If a slider helps the people, it stays. If it makes the background louder, it goes.
This is what photographers mean by separation. A photo is flat, it has no real depth. So I create depth with three things: light, colour, and sharpness. The people get brighter, warmer, and sharper. The background gets softer, cooler, and quieter. Your eye goes where the light and the warmth are, and it stays there. Nothing about that is a trick. It is how our eyes already work.
4. People stay people.
I do not smooth skin into plastic. I do not whiten eyes until they glow. I do not slim anybody or reshape anybody. The baby's skin and the dad's skin in this photo are exactly as they were. Pores, fine lines, a bit of unevenness, that is what makes a person believable. Clean up a temporary blemish if it distracts, sure. But the person stays the person. Years from now, when this little girl is grown up and looks at this photo, she should recognise her dad and herself, not a polished version of them.
5. Timeless beats trendy.
Editing styles come and go. A few years ago everything was dark and moody. Before that, everything was washed out and pastel. Right now, somebody is selling a preset that makes every photo look like a film still from 1974. Trends age fast, and a photo edited to a trend looks old within a couple of years. Honest colour and honest light do not age. I would rather your photos still feel right in twenty years than feel fashionable this month.
That is the philosophy. Now here is what it looks like in practice.
Try it on your photo
Here is the short version, if you want to practice this on one of your own photos.
- White balance first, then exposure, highlights and shadows. Get the foundation right.
- Fix the colours one at a time in the Colour Mixer. Skin lives in orange. Find the colour that matters most in your photo and give it a little love.
- Add a little warmth in Color Grading, midtones and shadows only.
- Touch Calibration, Blue Primary Hue, and see what one small move does.
- Make a subject mask and light the people up on their own.
- Invert it, soften the background, and let the people own the frame.
- Add one glow, warm or cool depending on the day, and one gentle vignette.
Do those seven things, slowly, and your photo will look like the moment felt. That is the whole trick.
People first, place second.
Want to learn it properly?
I teach this the same way I do it, one on one, in 45 minutes, in person or online. We open your own photos in Lightroom and work through them together, step by step, until you can do it on your own. One class is $125 plus HST, or four classes for $400 plus HST.
Hope this helped. Now open Lightroom and try one mask.