How I edit my blog photos

Unfortunately, I don't own a DSLR or any other decent camera for that matter (except for an old Canon that barely works anymore). I take the pictures for this blog with my Samsung Galaxy S2. Yeah, I know, shocker - a blogger who takes pictures with their phone?! But honestly, it works for me and I don't see the point in spending a fortune on a DSLR at this point, when after editing, the pictures I take with my phone look half decent. In this post I'm going to show you exactly how I edit my blog photos in Photoshop CS3, but I bet you can do the same with any other editing program.

Basically what I do is play around with the brightness and contrast and the curves and put some finishing touches with the Spot cleaning brush to correct any mistakes. I prefer adding new adjustment layers as this way I can control their opacity and fill and mix it up a little bit. I would advice against making the adjustments to the background layer directly because you can't make changes to it later if you feel like you need to.

Brightness and contrast:

Adjusting the brightness and contrast can improve your pictures immensely. However it's important not to go overboard with it because you want to show the product's true colour, noting too bright or too dark. What I do here is add a new Brightness and contrast adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness and contrast) and up the brightness to about +20 and up the contrast to about +5-10 if needed. A pretty self-explainatory step, but a very important one as well.

Curves:

You can skip this step if you're satisfied with the results you got, but for me it's good to add a little extra depth and to brighten up the image a bit more. What I do is create a new Curves adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves). And here's where you can get extra creative and make your pictures stand out. I use the built-in curves such as Linear Contrast and Lighten, but you can also buy or download pre-made curves (to install them simply click on the button left of "OK", then click on Load preset, choose your target colder and load your curve). I like the ones from Digital Film Actions but you can search Deviantart for more curves or Photoshop actions to find the ones that suit your needs best. Once you've completed this step you should have an almost finished image.

Spot Healing Brush: If there's a pesky little speck of dust on your background, or of there's a stain on the packaging of your product that you've missed, that's when the Spot healing brush comes in handy! And oh, yeah. It's great for removing pimples as well! Score. So what I do is basically take the spot healing brush and click on the stain/spot/dust and it blends seamlessly with what's next to it.

Extra tips: You can crop your images if you haven't composed your shot well. It's a quick fix for that. Also, if you find that you stick to the same routine, you can compose a Photoshop Action to speed up the process. Or you can download some pre-made actions and see which ones tickle your fancy.