When it comes to blogging, I easily spend most of my time taking pictures. It’s a real passion and something that I love doing. Since investing in a DSLR, I’ve started to learn how to get the best from it. But that doesn’t mean that I still don’t have to edit my pics. Sometimes a picture with need cropping, or if the light has been rubbish then they’re need to be brightened. I’m not talking about editing out eye bags or whitening teeth – no one is perfect and that’s OK.
I haven’t invested in anything fancy or expensive like photoshop. Instead I use PicMonkey which is free to use. I also don’t tend to shot in RAW mode, though if you plan on doing a lot of editing that this would be advisable. So these are my tips on how to edit your blog pictures.
The first thing I tend to do after cropping is to up the exposure. This is normally needed when the weather has been a bit grey. This tool allows you to increase the brightness, highlights, shadows and contrast. A lot of what I’ve learnt is through trial and error. The great thing about using PicMonkey is that you can always try something then click the undo button if you don’t like it.
Next up is colours. When taking pictures of makeup, sometimes the colours can look a bit washed which is really annoying, That’s where the Saturation and Temperature bars come in handy. You can play around with the levels to match up the colour to the product. Which is ideal when you’ve taken hundreds of pictures and not one of them shows off the colour correctly.
Finally I use the sharpen tool to help the pictures look clearer and crisper. Be careful not to slide the bar too much with this tool. As sometimes it can make the pictures look a little odd but if I have a slightly blurry picture that is a dream tool.
I hope these tips have helped. I also have a post on how to take better blog pictures if you want some more tips. I’m obviously not an expert but I hope it’s been useful. Let me know if you edit your pictures and what packages you use.
Alice says
I’ve not really used PicMonkey to edit pictures before, I use Photoshop but PicMonkey seems like a great alternative. I also tend to just up the brightness and contrast if my photos need it 🙂
Stephanie says
PicMonkey is a good alternative to Photoshop, but I think Photoshop has more features x
Shazza says
PicMonkey sounds like a really useful alternative to PhotoShop. Not heard of it until now.
Stephanie says
It’s a great alternative, especially as it’s free x
Sarah Bailey says
I have admit to relying on picmonkey – i think it is a great free tool to turn to. Though I’m hoping to get photoshop as well sometime soon. x
Stephanie says
In an ideal world I’d love Photoshop, but PicMoneky does me for now x
Emma says
I’ve just started up my blog! This was a really useful read.. I’m just going to go read your other posts! xx
Stephanie says
Thank you, glad you found this post useful x
Sarah says
Thanks for sharing these, I’m never too sure what to do with editing so I’ll definitely try some of these tips! 🙂
Stephanie says
No problem, glad you found the post useful x
Annabel (@Mascaramalteser) says
Goodness knows how awful my photos would be without exposure. Great post!
Annabel ♥
Stephanie says
Thank you x