Time for another photo edit of the week breakdown! Here is a look I shot for my Nordstrom Anniversary Sale haul. I took the photo on my iPhone towards the end of the day. Most of the light is coming from a large window to my left, but I did set up a light I use for Youtube in the hallway to my right to balance everything out.

Photo Edit of the Week

Snapseed

In snapseed, I typically edit the background and target darker areas in the photo that I want to brighten. Let me walk you through how I do this!

• I used the selective tool and brightened my face to +16. You can see how dark it was in the cover photo.
• I used the brush tool to apply 0.7 exposure to the entire photo.
• I remove the 0.7 exposure by adding 0.3 to just my outfit and myself to bring back more color. I like the background bright and find it’s easier to remove the overexposed areas than to try to outline the entire background. You can zoom in to get closer to the edges if you need to.

Instagram

Out of habit I typically do most of the editing in the Instagram app. I always add a good amount of exposure and shadows and decrease the highlights to add detail back into the photo.  For this photo, I adjusted saturation and warmth only slightly. This photo was already warm-toned because I took it towards the end of a sunny-summer day. You can see the exact amount of adjustments I used in the photo above.

Facetune

I use this app to add detail to specific areas and sometimes smooth out parts on my skin. For this photo, I added detail to the fraying on the bottom of my jeans, the knot on my shirt, the collar on the vest, and my eyelashes (always!). I used the smooth tool to decrease the shine on my forehead. I don’t have a before and after of this step because the changes are so slight, but you can see how it turned out in the final picture.

Once edits are finalized, I run the photo through the LIKEtoKNOW.it app to link the products for Instagram. You can read all about how LIKEtoKNOW.it works and how bloggers make money in this post.

Let me know what you think of these photography tutorials?

Amanda John