Photo Editing Like a Pro: Photography Principles and the Five-Step Rule

At iPhone Islam we decided to work on This series To teach everyone how to adjust their photos to make them even more amazing. And simplify the professional tools that make the pictures better by stages. Slowly read this article and it is best to apply with it. Without going too far, let's start our first lesson.

Rule of thirds

Of course, the optimal picture starts with your camera. And since the smartphone camera is now very advanced, it is a great tool for capturing photos. And you have to use it in the best way. The following of course is not all the tips for photography but some of the best ones to start with:

• Turn on the Grid or the tiles. Go to Settings -> Camera -> Tiles / Grid. And turn on this choice. Or turn on Grid's Choice in The VSCO application If you are using it.

These tiles help you to use the most popular base of photography which is the rule of triangulation. It means that the center of the image should not be located in the middle but rather in one of the thirds of the scene. This helps to make the image more interesting and eye-catching. Of course you might want to center the subject for some custom photos. But the rule of triangulation can be followed to make most photos attractive.

How do you apply it? You simply have to place the subject that is the center of attention, especially if a person's face is at one of the intersections between squares on the screen. Or make the target parallel to one of the lines that make up the intersections. The principle is simple and is illustrated in the example above. As the dog rests his head at the intersection of one of the lines. The rest of his body also goes somewhat along the line coming down from the intersection.

Simplicity and focus

Make sure your photo has a specific focus. As a tree for example, or as someone. This helps a lot to make the image more powerful. He also finds simplicity to make sure that your image contains the least possible number of elements (as much as possible, of course). If you want to photograph your cat, for example, make sure that it is not surrounded by toys and chairs in the background. Unless it was intentionally placed.

Do not place the horizon in the middle of the image

If you are photographing a landscape, make sure the horizon line isn't right in the middle of the photo. It's a little lower or even higher, depending on your goal. It is a general principle not to place any strong vertical or horizontal lines right in the middle of the picture. As it distracts attention as it distracts from the beauty of the rest of the elements and its beauty.

Get started with SnapSeed

We will teach modification in the program in English. Because most of the terms in it are used in all other photo editing apps. This way, it is easy for you to transfer your experience to any other program and develop it later. To start, open the program and click Open at the top. Then choose the image that you want to modify in your device. Today, we chose this picture that we took of San Bahri in Alexandria.

Windows: Looks, Tools, and Base

The Looks window is for ready-made filters. You can use it if you want. But it is not our goal. We want to develop our skills to reach professionalism gradually so that we rely on ourselves to produce the desired appearance completely. It is not what the app makers specify. So we will choose Tools window.

We will be using The five-step rule Which you can apply to any image. Regardless of any other adjustments you want to make.

The first step: storytelling and setting the scene

Many neglect this important step. Which can greatly increase the quality of your scene. Frequently, not all elements in the image are appropriate for the scene. Even if those elements are nice on their own. So try to crop the scene to set it for the best part. Try to observe the rule of triangulation while cutting.

Crop: When you choose the tool, you can use the tool for free cutting as you like. But if you want specific dimensions for the image, you can choose from the ready-made dimensions on the side. I want to post this photo to Instagram so I'm going to choose Square to be square. Then I crop the scene as I want. More sky and closer the tongue from the bottom of the image to make it the center of attention according to the rule of triangulation.

Notice how two parts of the tongue fall under the intersections of the square lines. Then we press the sign at the bottom of the screen.

But the image still needs to be modified. And it is not in the required form. The problem here is that it is slightly curved. And the horizon is not straight. So we go For the rotate tool. When you open the tool, the program suggests a specific modification. You can use it if you like it, but in my case I had to do a bit more rotation by moving my finger across the screen from right to left. So that the horizon line is completely straight. Also, with the tool, you can reverse the direction of the image by using the two opposite triangles button at the bottom. Which I decided to use because I like having the tongue on the right.

The second step: balancing brightness and shadows

Brightness and shadows mean the amount of light that falls on the image. Any brightness. When adjusting the brightness, you can find a tool called Brightness in all applications. We do not recommend using it at first because it gives undesirable results.

Before making this mod, you need to learn some terms. There is a term Highlights It means the brightest areas in the picture. Shadows And its literal meaning is shadows. But not in the usual sense. That is, no shadow in the image is the Shadows area. Rather, it symbolizes the darker areas in the image. That is, the least exposed to light.

Now to do this we're going to a tool Tune Image. Which contains many modifications. To choose one, scroll up and down. Or, click the edit button below, next to the x. Then swipe left and right to make the adjustment.

First we modify the Shadows in the image. If you notice here, you will find that the darkest areas are the green part of the sea and the tongue. Even the building on the tongue is indistinguishable. So we choose Shadows and then increase the cursor until the building and tongue are as we want them to be. And you don't care about any other part of the picture. Then we press the sign.

Of course the building is beautiful, but the rest of the picture is just too bright. So we choose the Layers button at the top -> View edits to display all your edits. Here you see all of your edits in order. Select the last Tune image in which we have brightened the shadows -> press the "Modify Effect" button in the middle. You will see the image here without modification. Then you can use your finger to scroll over only the part that you want to apply the effect to. In our case here is the building and the front part of the sea.

You can also click on the eye mark below to see the part of the image that you drew to apply the effect through the red color. What we did here is called using a mask. That is, apply the effect to only a specific part.

Now we can go back with the back arrow. Then open the Tools window and choose the Tune image tool to adjust the brightest parts (Highlights).

Since it is sunset, the brightest places will not be strongly noticeable in this image. But it is part of the sky and part of the white foam of the sea. After trying to increase the highlights a lot and reduce them, I decided to reduce them a bit to add depth to the sky with the darker color. Then as we did in the previous part, I go to the Layers button, then apply the effect to the orange part of the sky only. Finally I repeated this step to only add the highlights to the white part of the sea.

The third step: the colors

first step To work on colors is to go to the white balance tool (White balance). It contains two options. The first is for the image temperature. Increasing it to the right increases the warmth of the image, meaning it becomes a little orange. To the left it becomes more blue. This is an important adjustment because phone cameras usually tend to increase the warm color in the image and you may need to reduce the warmth a little.

The second option is Tint, which changes the image colors slightly to green (left) or purple (right). You may need to adjust the colors if there are shades of green in the image, for example due to trees or light outside of your control.

Our photo today was taken at sunset so I want to warm up the sun part a little. So I just heat up the image a little bit by swiping to the right. Then repeat using the mask to apply the effect to only the part of the sky above the sun.

The second step Color work is to change the saturation, which increases or decreases the color saturation. To do so, we go back to the Tune Image tool, then go to Saturation and scroll right to see what happens.

When I did that in our image, I found that the color of the sea is getting better, but the sky is getting bad and overdone in color since we have previously improved it with white balance. So I will increase the contrast and then apply it to the building and green in the sea with a mask.

Then I go to Tune image again and choose the warmth tool this time. It is a dedicated tool in SnapSeed that makes multiple color adjustments together. We drag it to the left until we see the sea becomes blue. Then we apply a mask to make the effect specific to the green part of the sea only, without affecting the rest of the image.

Finally we go to the Tonal contrast tool, which increases color contrast and clarity. When entering the tool, the program suggests a modification. Swipe down and up to choose one of the available settings, then test with it to see how it affects each part of the image. What I did was that the Low Tones setting affected seawater and the tongue. This is what I want. So I set all the other settings to 0 to offset them and then increased the Low Tones a bit. With this increase, the angles and color character of the building and the sea are increased. Now we press ✓.

Fourth step: noise cancellation

Noise The feeling that the image is pixelated or blurred. The opposite is softness, where you feel the colors mixed with each other without specifying angles or clarity of colors.

Of course, you won't find a picture with all that noise or exaggerated smoothness. But sometimes you find places in the image that have more noise than is acceptable, especially those that were photographed in low light conditions.

To adjust the noise, go to the Details tool. There, the first setting is Structure. And increasing it reduces smoothness, and reducing it increases smoothness.

The second setting is sharpening It sharpens the picture. You can experience the effect to feel what it does. It reduces the smoothness in some places and increases the sharpness, which is very beneficial for things like hair. Cameras tend to be too soft and great when sharpened.

In my picture I feel the sky and the sea tongue need some softness but the rest is good. So to do I swipe left in the Structure setting and then use a mask to apply the effect to only the tongue and the red part of the sky and some of the sea.

Fifth step: remove defects

And here I mean things that are too much for the picture. Maybe some garbage on the image floor. Or some food left in a child's mouth that you don't want in the picture.

You can do this by going to a tool Healing Then paint on the part to be erased to be deleted from the image. But be careful as this tool does not work on anything. Especially large items. Often, you cannot remove it with it, but it is recommended that you crop it from the image, as in the first step above.

It is recommended that the item to be deleted is located on a consistent background. That is, for example, a small plastic sheet over sea water or a cement road. Or even a cut on the skin of someone in the picture.

As for our current image, I don't want to remove any imperfections.

Additional effects

In SnapSeed you can put a lot of additional effects, which will be explained in future articles. But for this lesson I decided to add a final effect to the image, which I will explain. You can apply additional effects by going to the brush (Brushes) Then choose one of the tools. And here I made my choice Dodge and burn. Which brighten or darken the colors in the image strikingly. Reduced the effect to +5 by pressing the Down arrow. Then I painted the places I want to lighten, which is the building and the tongue. Then I set it to -5 to darken some places in the sea.

Note that it is a brush and you paint a little, and when you repeat the paint over the same area, the strength of the effect increases. A general rule of thumb is that you do not want any effect to exceed an acceptable threshold. That is, make all your adjustments slight and not very large in order to keep the image consistent and real.

Notes:

• When applying any effect, you can press the half-dotted square button at the top of the page to the left or right to see the image without the effect. Then lift your finger to apply the effect again.
• After completing all the adjustments, you can return to Tune Image and then play with the Brightness setting to see if it adds what you want to the image. If you find what you like, you can leave it. And perhaps put it on certain parts of the image using the mask, as we explained previously.
• You can delete a specific adjustment completely by going to Layers, then clicking on the desired adjustment, and instead of the button in the middle, click on the garbage mark to completely erase the effect.
• After completing the image, click on the Export window below, then Export again to save all modifications in a copy of the image. But make sure you are done with it, as this option will not allow you to delete any future edits.
• The images in this article are compressed and not shown to you in their original quality due to the limitations of the site.
• Congratulations on your first picture if you apply with us.
  

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Finally, this is the old picture compared to the new one