Five Editing Tools Every Photographer Should Know

Modern editing applications offer a veritable plethora of tools to both evaluate the information in your photos and to edit them to whatever creative vision you have in mind. This excellent video will show you five fundamental tools that every photographer should know how to use to edit their photos efficiently and effectively. 

Coming to you from Ted Forbes with The Art of Photography, this great video discusses five tools every photographer should know how to use: histograms, sliders, levels, curves, and color wheels (or a similar tool). Histograms are a great way to make sure you are not clipping your shadows or your highlights, but my personal favorite trick for quickly checking that is the J key shortcut in Lightroom. When you press J, Lightroom will highlight clipped shadows in blue and blown highlights in red, making it super easy to quickly check that you are not accidentally pushing the edit too far. Nonetheless, if you can master histograms, sliders, levels, curves, and color wheels, you will be able to effectively edit most photos to give them a professional touch and to put your personal creative style into your work. Check out the video above for the full rundown. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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7 Comments

The J key shortcut in LR has been huge for my editing and helping my eye. I think it was one of Tony Northrup’s videos that turned me on to it. Either way, super helpful.

The J key shortcut in LR has been huge for my editing and helping my eye. I think it was one of Tony Northrup’s videos that turned me on to it. Either way, super helpful.

The J key shortcut in LR has been huge for my editing and helping my eye. I think it was one of Tony Northrup’s videos that turned me on to it. Either way, super helpful.

You know what? I think the J key has been a huge help for Aaron Cole. ;-)

At least 3 times! ;-)

Personally, I prefer the Jay key. It gives better results.

Excellent . No gimmicks, no ego. no grandstanding. Just pure, well presented content.

If every 'borrowed' video on FS was of the quality of Ted Forbes' work, I wouldn't whinge so much.