You can slave away at your editing software for hours on end to finish editing a photo perfectly and it won't matter in the end because no one pays that close attention till you are in a contest. For more practical purposes, it’s generally better to cut back on time wherever you can. While photography lighting is important, no one will pay half a head of attention if the photo is off by a tone or two. However, everyone will pay attention if you don’t submit your work on time. Today, we will learn about tips and tricks which will make your editing work faster and more efficiently without adding stress on your working conditions. If you talk with anyone from a digital photography school behind their speed of work, they will also offer you similar tips. Forget perfection, work on efficiency In the field, when someone says Smile, it generally means just that - smile. People don’t have a lot of time to sit back and find fault with your work if it meets the basic requirements. So, the first trick is to highlight only the aspect which is asked. If you are asked to depict smile in your work, work only on the smile and no other aspects of the picture till they’re very important. It’s alright to make mistakes and miss some points if you can get everything else to work with your set-up. Target the important elements first and then venture toward the less specific areas for your target. If you are working on wedding photography, highlight that aspect and forget about the rest of the background. Hardly anyone is going to pay attention to it if they are not in it. The main focus should always be the point to be highlighted. Utilize shortcuts When professionals say that there are no shortcuts to success, they are lying through their teeth to you. Editing is always faster and better when you utilize shortcuts and use actions which will help you bring certain aspects of your photograph. Now, let's take a quick example to understand where exactly you are being lied to. Let’s say that you are into fashion photography and would like to edit your image. For that, you will require to use tools from your editing software. Many times, it takes you minutes to find what you need from the menu, which adds to our time count. However, it requires time and effort to find the corresponding tool you need for editing. This time can be shortened if you know which shortcut and the key combination will give you which tool. Just pressing control + Z instead of Undo makes our life easier. Using more combinations will help us save a lot of time and effort on our part. Use auto where you can The software is a simple program which has its limitations, but so do humans. Many times, when we edit a photo, we have no idea what we are looking for. It may be heavy work for us or simple changes. At such times you can ask your software about its preferences. Editing software is programmed in such a way that they generally run on ideas about what can make your edited image better. If nothing is hitting your brain, looking at the auto options such as auto tone can help you decide or get an idea about which direction you should go in. Even photo studio often uses auto functions to improve their images. Don't always think that software auto's produce a defective product, for sometimes it gives you exactly what you need. First, take a look at the auto screen and the product you have, then decide what you actually want to present to your client. Don’t get emotional while cutting We may say that a picture depicts thousands of emotions and words, but while editing you need to be a straight face, almost like a robot on a mission. Even photography websites cut a lot from their original pictures to present them in final form. If you want to get perfect images, don't hesitate to crop and cut through your pictures when necessary. Similarly, use black and white filters where you can. They hide imperfections even if they seem to take away the emotions from images. While looking at commercial photography, you are even encouraged to adopt these methods as an editing booster for your images. Don’t just spend hours upon hours while editing, judicially uses your time and effort for tough endings.
