A good photographer can capture candid wedding moments but can’t alter elements, such as poor lighting, dust, and other distortions that have a major impact on the clicked picture. Such natural disruptions can significantly alter the photos. However, as a professional photographer, you can’t afford to ruin a couple’s priceless memories. The solution to this is fixing the errors in the photographs through effective editing.
Photographers can effortlessly enhance wedding photos by mastering simple editing techniques. Accurate editing can transform an ordinary photo into an extraordinary one. Additionally, it helps photographers stand out in the competitive market, attract more clients, and progress in their photography business.
Photographers may either learn how to edit wedding photos themselves or hire an expert wedding photo editing service company to perform the task, especially if they are overloaded with work.
This blog will guide you with useful photo tips to excel at editing.
12 Tips for Editing Wedding Photographs
Here are some tips to improve your editing skills and clients’ wedding photographs.
1. Reduce Noise
Tiny, random, fuzzy flecks are referred to as “noise” in photographs shot in low light. It distracts the viewer from the photo’s foreground, point of focus, and overall impact. Typically, it can be seen in some areas of some images, particularly those with dark hues, or over the entire picture in low-light shots. Whatever the cause, noise can degrade the quality of your wedding photos, and it may be simply reduced or eliminated using editing software. However, if you are new to editing and have no idea about reducing noise, you can opt for professional wedding photo editing services. These services will not only reduce noise from your photographs but also handle the entire editing segment.
2. Play with Colors
Wedding photos are supposed to be bright. But when you use a digital camera, it can only capture light using red, blue, and green sensors. Then these colors are mixed in the proper amounts to produce a variety of hues. However, if the red, blue, and green get too magnified by the lenses, the colors may suffer and become unclear. Use proper editing tools to deal with these issues. For instance, you can highlight the background grass or whiten the bride’s little pale dress.
3. Crop or Resize
Resizing the images using editing tools can improve the photo’s overall composition. If you use the resizing feature appropriately, it can turn out to be more effective than you expect. When resizing, don’t be afraid to experiment with various frame sizes. For instance, crop the image, so it no longer fills the frame and then refocus on the main object before lowering its size. If you want a more refined appearance, you can shift the problem to the side to create dynamic negative space. Additionally, you can use the cropping tool to straighten the horizons. This helps the viewer see more clearly by eliminating eye blinking and other distractions.
4. Use Customized Presets
Editing tools generally have presets. But using these simple presets is not enough; try to make customizable presets. You will have a distinctive design that emphasizes more of your personality and sense of style by experimenting with customized presets. Additionally, you can ask the bride and groom for presets suggestions. This will help you add the client’s unique touches to the images.
5. Fix Flaws
Typically, the bride and groom are the main subjects of wedding photos. These images are close-ups, with the focus on their face. The closer the shot, the more chance of flaws being visible in the photo. Depending on what you want to improve, use retouching tools like the teeth whitener, spot remover, pimple remover, and body tuner. Try to make the photo as flawless as you can. But remember, don’t make too many changes. Use these features to retouch the minimal sections of the photograph.
6. Blur Distractions
Sometimes, you simply can’t crop the entire negative background to focus on the main object. Let’s say our primary focus is on engagement rings. In this case, you can blur the unnecessary background objects or negative spacing. This helps the viewer focus more on the important objects and little details. For instance, blur the rest of the background and focus on the bride and groom’s hands. The viewer will focus more on the detailed engagement rings on their fingers.
7. Experiment with B&W Effects
Not all the photos need to be colorful. You can simply turn the colorful photographs into black and white. Monochrome photographs give a vintage feeling making it look more classic and elegant. Additionally, B&W effects help to hide a variety of physical flaws, including minor wrinkles, uneven hair color, redness, blotchy skin tones, and paleness.
8. Highlight Dreamy Details
As a wedding photographer, you must have seen that every bride wears a unique wedding gown. These gowns or the bridal hairstyles were planned and prepared months before the special occasion. When clicking photos, or editing them, focus on highlighting minute details like the Bride’s veil, pearl necklace, or beautiful nails. This makes the bride happy and remember every minute detail of their wedding.
9. Optimize Contrast
Enhancing the contrast levels in wedding images is similar to improving the brightness or exposure. When contrast is exceptionally high, the picture is stark, with all tones—regardless of color—either extremely dark or bright. When it’s low, the image is flat, and nothing in the frame stands out. Achieving the ideal balance between both levels is necessary. The contrast feature helps to underline a scene’s purpose or heighten the emotion of a scene.
10. Adjust Sharpness
After adjusting contrasts, concentrate on setting the sharpness feature. Pay special attention to specific portions of the picture to assess the impact of each sharpness modification. Generally, wedding photographs are enlarged and printed. Sharpness helps to highlight the details. However, use sharpness on images only when essential. Excessive sharpening might produce an artificial halo effect around the object in the picture.
11. Add Sparks & Frames
Editing software has brush tools that help you to add sparks, flares, lights, and a magical feel. These can help to enhance the photograph further. If you are editing night wedding photos, these features will make them look beautiful and extraordinary. Additionally, there are various wedding frames available in the software. Try to use them to create unique effects. Even though frames may appear as a part of simple editing, they are excellent at drawing attention to and emphasizing the objects. This makes using such software a fantastic option for editing wedding photos.
12. Create a Wedding Collage
Even though creating wedding collages is not part of the editing process, a photographer’s extra effort to please their client is always worthwhile. Use pre-installed templates to make a collage. Select a bunch of photos of one particular moment and create a collage. For instance, take 3-4 photos of the ring ceremony and turn them into one collage. Additionally, you can insert a beautiful message (using text features) in the collage to stand out.
Conclusion
These are some tips to enhance your wedding photos. Although it might be challenging, editing wedding photos can also be enjoyable. As a professional photographer, try to learn every wedding photo editing skill. However, if you attend wedding events regularly and click more than 500 photographs at one event, hire a professional photo editor to ease the process and not overburden yourself. Further, various third-party businesses offer wedding photo editing services for professional photographers. No matter how you choose to go about it, ensure you add unique effects to all your wedding photographs to give them the much deserved enhanced and vibrant look.
Author Bio
Kathy Butters is a content strategist currently working at PhotozWorld, a leading photo editing, retouching, restoration and image enhancing company providing dependable and affordable photo editing services. As a creative writer and a photography enthusiast for more than 10 years, she loves to share her passion for image editing with other professionals. Her write-ups usually cover topics surrounding tips or best practices for image editing, photo retouching, portrait editing, photo correction, and more.
