Photography Tips: Quick, easy ways to make your photos fabulous

I’ve had a few readers recently ask me how I edit the photos that I put up on my blog and Facebook page, so I thought I’d share some of my tips with you.

I am by no means an expert and totally flattered that you love my photos (cue big cheshire cat grin). Most of what I do has been learnt purely from trial and error and taking so many photos that my poor iphoto account is fit to burst (really must find the time to sort it out).

Here are a few  of my very quick and easy tips to help make your photos look fabulous!

This photo was taken with my Canon 70D.  The ‘before’ image is the original.  The ‘after’ I edited in Picmonkey with three simple steps:

1. I lifted the exposure (using the exposure button) to make it much lighter.
2. I made her eyes a little brighter (using the touch up button – shaped like a lipstick).
3. I cropped it to a size 5″ x 7″ (using the crop button)

It took me about 5 seconds to fix and I think it look SO much better.  What do you think?  There is so much more you can do with Picmonkey, so I highly recommend just having a good play around with it. I love my photos to be bright and often over-exposed, so adjusting the exposure is always the very first thing I do.

I’m also a real fuss-pot when it comes to posting photos online and I will never post anything on the internet unless I have edited it first.  Especially when taking photos with my iphone and posting them directly to the internet (namely Facebook).  

This is the original shot I took looking straight into the sun on the beach the other day with my iphone. I saved the original (which is always good practice), and then used the “little moments App” by Fat Mum Slim to adjust the exposure.  

I think it now looks much more like I was seeing it with my naked eye and removing the shadows makes it look much clearer to me.  Lighter, clearer photos are much easier to view on a mobile devices – which, lets be honest, is what most of us use to look at Facebook photos these days.  You can also go a step further and add a filter to your photos if you want to be a little different.  There are so many to choose from that I just recommend going with the one that grabs your attention, chances are everyone else will like it too.  

I’ve added the ‘Hailey” filter here from the Little moments App as I think it makes this photo looks so much warmer (it was a freezing cold day when I took it).

You can also have fun and even tell a story or drive a message with your photos by adding text and overlays to them.

You can very quickly and easily add text to your photos using both Picmonkey on a desktop or laptop or using an app on your mobile device.  I don’t always add text to photos but I think you can often get a much stronger message across when posting to your social media account or blog if you do, especially when using something like Pinterest.

I used to use two or three different apps to edit one photo on my iphone, but these days I just tend to use the little moments app.  I can do just about everything with it, making it so much quicker to get fabulous photos on your iphone.  I’m not very good at using photoshop (yet) so I just stick with Picmonkey or Canva and as it gives me everything I need quickly.

If you search google there are hundreds of articles with great tips for editing photos, but here are some of my favourites.   A Beautiful Mess gives you great tips for taking amazing food photographs, Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim explains how to rock sun flare (which I LOVE) and here is a look at 32 wonderful, creative and unique ways to take a family photo.

How do you edit your photos?  Do you prefer over or under exposed images?