Photo Editing Tips

Dynamic Range measures the difference between the lightest and darkest points in an image. The greater the difference, the better. This is what the subconscious eye sees as appealing and a photo with great dynamic range can stop people dead in their tracks. If you need more 'Wows' on your posts, this may be the way to harness them.

Dynamic Range (DR) can be measured through the histogram graphs in your photo editor or camera. The graphs measure pure black on the left-hand side through to pure white on the right.

Check your histogram graph before and after editing and you should see a marked difference. When you maximize the lightness and darkness in your photo, you will see how the graph will stretch fully across from left to right. 

Good dynamic range has nothing to do with color, although that will naturally increase as well. It is more to do with contrast, and the measure of lightness/darkness and highlights/shadows in your image.

Have you ever taken a photo of a beautiful scene and been disappointed with the result? Often a lot of the details that you saw have been lost in the photo. That is because the human eye has a greater perception of dynamic range than what even the best cameras can produce. 

My cameras, the Sony mirrorless A7R series, are listed among the best cameras for capturing dynamic range, however I still use a photo editor to improve the DR of my images. 

In cameras, it is actually the size of the pixels that produce the best DR. Fewer, larger pixels are much better than more smaller pixels. Too much pixel density at either end of the histogram often results in the loss of highlights or shadows. Your camera just cannot capture it. Shooting in RAW and keeping your ISO levels low are ways to improve your camera's DR, as well as using Graduated ND Filters, but ultimately further editing is often necessary.

Smart phones, for example the latest iPhone 15, have come a long way in improving their DR. but they are still behind most of the top DSLR cameras available. 

So that now I have convinced you (fingers crossed) to use a photo editor, what are the best editors available? Here is the 2024 list published by PCMag:

• Adobe Photoshop Best for Detailed Image Manipulation and Design
• Adobe Lightroom Classic Best for Professionals
• Adobe Lightroom Best for Photo Workflow
• Adobe Photoshop Elements Best for Hobbyists
• DxO PhotoLab Best for Noise Reduction and Camera Profile Corrections
• Phase One Capture One Pro Best for Raw File Rendering
• Corel PaintShop Pro Best for Budget-Conscious Image Editors
• CyberLink PhotoDirector

Adobe Lightroom is often favored by photographers for simplicity of use, plus it has a lot of presets to save you time. I use Photoshop with the Nik Collection by DxO Labs plug-in, using their Viveza and Color Efex Pro modules.  

However, ultimately, what you need is a good editor that can increase/decrease brightness, contrast, saturation, but more importantly highlights and shadows. 

Viewers are more likely to think favorably of products and social media posts that emphasize visuals than just words or text. Images are very powerful tools. They can elicit feelings of happiness, excitement, curiosity or even sadness.

People are more likely to remember a specific brand just by looking at their images or logos. They are even likely to reminisce decades into the past and remember a familiar image in milliseconds: their favorite ice cream when they were a child, or their Mom's Sunday chicken pot pie. All of these powerful emotions and memories can aide your work enormously.

When you are editing you are bringing a photo to life. A bit of intensity here can go a long way, and this is where images with the best dynamic range wins. You need to have these fast-scrolling potential followers stop and go, Wow!

Photos can convey emotions by increasing the brain’s powerful hormones, and viewers can reminisce decades into the past and recall memories familiarized by your photo. Great images make people want to read your blog post or try your recipe. Studies have shown that visitors are more likely to return to your site if they can connect to your images.

Cameras have limitations and cannot always reproduce the same dynamic range that the human eye sees. Good editing can reproduce this loss by intensifying the impact of an image. Maximizing the difference between the light and dark tones in your photo will make it stand out and grab scroller-bys' attentions. If they like what they see, they are more likely to keep returning to your site for more of the same. 

When editing a photo, you do not need to increase color saturation too much. When you increase the dark and light tones of your image, other elements such as color and contrast will naturally intensify. 

In my career selling a lot of imagery, I have found that what I call 'flat' photos (with limited dynamic range) just don't sell very well, if at all. Firstly, buyers need to find them on crowded search pages, and secondly, the images themselves must pop out and say, 'buy me'!