DIY Wedding Image Editing Pitfalls

Image editing is the digital equivalent of film processing - a necessary, but tedious end step in the photography process. But when it comes to wedding photography, a 12-hour event can easily produce enough images to stretch that editing process into several weeks or even months, much to the dismay of the newlyweds. While editing wedding photos yourself may sound simple and cheap enough to start with, falling into one of these seven unexpected DIY image editing pitfalls can be disastrous. For more than a decade, Smart Photo Editors has been providing wedding image editing services and offers high-quality naturally enhanced wedding photos within budget and in the shortest time possible.

Spending Too Much Time Editing Wedding Photos

Photographers will often spend much more time editing the photos than they did shooting them. Besides just keeping you glued to a desk, spending too much time on the editing can affect your referrals. Couples that thought getting the photos back took forever are less likely to recommend you to a friend and taking that long before sharing the images could also drop your social media marketing reach. In many cases, time spent editing can interfere with meeting potential new brides and the constant exposure to wedding photos can leave you in a creative rut as you get ready to shoot the next wedding. Spending too much time editing can also leave your prices higher than competitors because of that extra time involved.

Failing to Correct That Blemish

The bride doesn’t want to remember that she works up with a big zit on the end of her nose or accidentally fell asleep in the sun and had horrible tan lines. The problem is, with wedding photos, those issues are in hundreds of images. Correcting every shot takes a serious time commitment, but not correcting each one chance ruining the bride’s favorite image.

Over-correcting and Offending

And just as bad as the ignored edit is the overdone edit. Photographers that are new to photo editing, as they learn new techniques, tend to use them unnecessarily. And if a bride notices that you’ve made her lose weight or made her skin look like Barbie’s, chances are, she’s probably going to be offended. Photo editing is about balance, and professional photo editors know just when to stop.

Editing so Much the Photo Ends Up Looking Worse Off

There’s such thing as too much editing, and when the photographer is also the editor, it’s often harder to step away at the right point. One DIY image editing pitfall is being so close to the original image that you take the editing too far. This can leave an image with so much saturation or so much contrast that it’s unpleasant to look at. Having a disconnect between that original scene and what’s captured on the image can mean a photo editor gets a better result not because of a different skill set, but simply because of having a set of fresh eyes.

Losing the Details

Great photo editing will bring out the smallest details, while novice photo editing will often squelch those details that give the image the extra boost. A professional photo editor will reveal details using curves and exposure adjustments, color grading and sharpening processes, just to name a few. Without fine-tuning the seemingly small adjustments (likely because of the time commitment on editing so many photos), those details never see their full potential.

Getting a “Cookie Cutter” Look

Often, DIY wedding photo editing means using presets to save time. And often, using presets means getting a final look that’s, well, a lot like everyone else’s final look because everybody is using those same presets. Presets apply adjustments without variation -- which means they don’t take your style or the contents of the actual image into consideration. A preset that works great on an outdoor image might render strange colors on an indoor shot, leaving the album with an inconsistent look despite using the same preset over and over again.

Photos with A Short-Lived Editing Trend

Photography, just like anything else, is susceptible to trends -- the problem with following the editing trends without actually understanding them is that they date your work. Following a trend subtly and tastefully is fine, but in many cases, trends are overdone. DIY photo editors also often continue using an editing style long after that trend has faded, which leaves the images feeling dated and can ruin prospective client’s first impressions.

Many photographers don’t have the necessary skills to edit their images. Moreover, some photographers have the right post-processing skills but can’t creatively distance themselves for an appropriate edit or simply don’t have the time. Find out how affordable avoiding those DIY wedding image editing pitfalls can be with a no-obligation quote from Smart Photo Editors. To know more about our skillsets and for a customized quotation, contact us today.