How I Edit my Brand Photos

When I was new to photography I found it so helpful to see other, more seasoned photographers processes for things like editing. Now that I’ve had a little experience myself (like 10 years 🙀🙈) I want to share what process works well for me. This is how I edit my photos:

And here are a few notes about my process for those of you that like to read too 😉

First of all, I cull my images in Adobe Bridge using the staring system. This is usually a two part process of me giving 5 stars to far too many images and then going through again with a more critical eye, taking out duplicates, etc. Once I’ve narrowed down the photos I want to edit I open them (usually just a few at a time of alike lighting situations) into Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). I do almost all of my photo editing in ACR, only ever bringing the photos all the way through into Photoshop for extra things like spot healing (which can be done in ACR, but I prefer to do in Photoshop).

I use a highly modified VSCO preset on all my photos. It’s based on their Kodak Royal 400 - C profile. The main trademarks of my modified version of this preset are a little desaturation and softness created by bringing the shadows up. I usually tweak a few things on each photo. Most often I need to straighten the photo slightly and I like to crop into square for a lot of my work since a lot of it is shot for Instagram. In addition, since I shoot in RAW I usually let my camera decide on the white balance and so this usually needs to be slightly tweaked in post production too (I like my photos to be a little on the warmer side). And that’s it! My editing process is pretty simple and straight forward.

Having a personal preset has helped me to streamline my editing workflow so that it goes pretty fast and all my photos look pretty uniform. I hope this was a helpful glimpse into my workflow and that it helps you create your own! Feel free to ask questions in the comments section below!