There is no universal rule that tells you how you can retouch your photographs because it will depend on the effect you want to achieve, the type of image it is or the problems it has. But, in general, there are some basic retouching for photos that we can touch to have professional images whatever the tool you use , both on your computer and on your mobile phone or tablet.
Whether you use Adobe Photoshop or any other touch-up tool, for mobile or computer, you can use some basic settings that are recommended in almost any situation and that will make your images look much better. Use the smartphone or use a computer, there are quick and basic touch-ups that you can do to get out of the way and that will allow you a more colorful result. In addition, they are simple and will not require to be a great expert in the field to carry them out.
Straighten
It is terrible to face a beautiful photograph and see that the horizon is crooked. It is not always easy to do it well when we take the photo but in just a few seconds we can edit it once it is done. It takes you nothing to straighten an image and absolutely all photo retouching tools will allow you to do it in seconds from your phone or your computer.
In Snapseed , for mobile phones, you can fix the horizon in seconds:
- Open the corresponding image
- Click on Tools
- Choose the Rotate option
- Automatically leaves the horizon as straight as possible
If you don’t want to download new applications, Instagram allows…
- Upload the photo you want to Instagram
- Click on “Edit” from the editing settings
- Touch on “Adjust”
- Move to one side or the other until the horizon fits
It will take seconds and you will have a much more professional effect.
Trim
Trimming is as important as straightening. We do not always fit the first one well but we have the possibility to adjust the image later. For example, if you want what you have focused on is right in the center or if you have taken too much depth and a person you did not expect was cast. Try different trim options to get relevance to what you want to have it.
Eliminate what bothers you
Before entering to edit the photograph itself, removing lines or objects that bother you is one of the most basic touch-ups to achieve a more professional effect. Although we shoot at the exact moment, we can not always take a picture without a bird spoiling it, an electricity cable appears …
In Photoshop, it is enough to use the correction brush or the patch according to the difficulty of what we want to correct and the precision we need. It will not take us the same time to remove rebellious hairs from the face in a portrait than to eliminate a bird in a completely blue sky. But the mechanism is the same.
On the mobile phone, you can use the Touch Retouch application if you want to do it as easily as possible and remove lines or even people from your photographs. You will only have to mark the line in question and delete it, without doing anything else. You can also use a brush with which to indicate everything you want to make disappear from your photograph and it will automatically disappear . It is fast and very effective, especially highly recommended if you do not have basic notions of editing. But you will have to pay 2.29 euros on iOS and 1.99 euros on Android to download it but it will be worth doing if you usually photograph and retouch photos from your mobile.
Lighting and shadows
Once you have trimmed, straightened and left in your image only the elements that they want to appear, lighting and contrast is one of the main things that we must touch and that we can do from any app or program by basic or simple.
Lighting will also allow you to have a much more striking effect on any image, whatever comes out of it. It is a basic touch up. It will depend on the program or application that you can use some options or others but you can control the exposure levels and regulate the lighting or, if not, you can always modify the brightness and contrast levels and get the result to be less off.
If you want to go one step further, you can illuminate areas that you want to give greater importance and obscure others. You can do it from the mobile phone with Snapseed.
- Open the photo you want in Snapseed
- Click on Tools
- Choose the “Selective” option
- Mark everything you want to brighten or darken
- Swipe to one side or the other to adjust the brightness or contrast
Also in Photoshop (or similar software) you will have it easy: just select the part you want to light and darken and go to Image> Adjustments> Levels so you have the finish you want and only in that exact area. To modify zone by zone, you will only have to select it until the desired effect is achieved.
Saturation
If the photographs are excessively muted, saturation will help us have more vivid and striking colors although it is always important to control this setting if you do not want the skies to appear totally unreal or to come out orange. Precisely in those cases, if you go out too orange in any photograph (either by the sun or by a mobile effect) it will be enough to lower the saturation of the image.
Sharpness / Sharpening
In some programs you will find the tool as “Sharpness” and in others you will see it as “Sharpen”. With this tool you will make blurry photographs look better and increase the level of detail. Of course, it will work in case the blur level is not too large or it will be impossible to recover the sharpness.
You will get an interesting effect not only in blurry images but to highlight areas of a portrait , such as enhancing the eyes, for example, or if you want to enhance wrinkles in a portrait of an older person and achieve a more professional effect. Also in cases of food photography you will get to distinguish all the details or have a much more striking or succulent appearance.
Blur the background
Blurring the background will help you give more prominence to what you want it to have. In the case of a portrait, for example, or a close-up of an object you want to highlight. You can select the background of an image with specialized photography software and bet on some kind of blur , as long as it is done smoothly and does not remain sharp with respect to what is focused.
There are applications that allow you to easily blur the background (such as Snapseed) and even some are specifically designed for it, such as Point Blur or as Blur Image Background editor. In these cases, just paint with a brush what you want to blur and you will automatically get more importance to the object or the subject in the foreground and the rest will not divert attention.
Whitewash the funds
This trick is especially interesting if you are going to take pictures of products or objects, still lifes, etc. We usually make an image of a vase or some plate of food on a white background but the light makes it yellow or gray and the result seems unprofessional or too mediocre. Whitening the background of the image will only take a few minutes and you will get a spectacular effect.
In the case of Photoshop, just select all the background you want to bleach and play with the levels until you get the effect. In addition, you can remove what is left with the concealer brush. We start from an image with a white background or trying to be white so getting the perfect white will not be difficult if we use the magnetic loop or the magic wand to mark the background or the object.
If you are going to use the mobile phone, we recommend Snapseed. If you have seen on Instagram those perfect still lifes in which the image always comes out white in the background and the light is ideal, you can also have them:
- Open Snapseed on your mobile phone
- Choose the picture you want to touch up
- Open the tools
- Choose the brush
- Choose “ Light and exposure”
- Use the arrows to go up to 10
- Pass the brush all over the white background you want to change
- Use the zoom for greater accuracy
You will bleach the bottom until you get a total white. If you want to give a final touch, you can use the “selective” tool and adjust the light and shadows so that it is fully adjusted and in harmony.
Be careful with the filters
If you touch up from a mobile phone or from any basic photo retouching program, you will see that there are all kinds of filters available that promise to improve your images. But watch out for the filters. You may get someone to achieve a proper and very professional effect, but excessive use of photo filters will only make it look much worse than it actually is.
Try first to touch the above parameters, adjust the light and improve saturation or sharpness. Once you do, you can test filters to see if they fit well with the result you are looking for but you don’t always have to use them per system. In addition, it is recommended that you bet on applications that allow you to control the level of the filters and not add them more. For example, VSCO allows you to add a filter to your photo but you can regulate exactly the intensity you want it to have.
Touch up imperfections
If you are going to use Photoshop, you can remove small pimples, spots or even dark circles that appear in the portraits. It is one of the basic retouching for photos when it comes to «fixing» portraits and it will be enough to do it with the program’s correction brush . Just select the concealer brush, mark a spot of the skin without imperfections and pass the brush through what you want to erase (spots, pimples, dark circles …) It is very simple and it will only take you a few minutes to have a not only more professional portrait. Just do not go over the touch up or it will seem that you have photographed a doll instead of a person. The skin has imperfections and it is not advisable to eliminate them completely or you will get an unrealistic effect.
If you don’t have Photoshop, it doesn’t matter. There are many websites to tweak imperfections online for free and very quickly. For example, the Ipiccy website allows you not only to eliminate the shine that appears on the skin or face but to whiten your teeth completely, paint your lips, tan the people who appear or even add mascara.
