Mobile Photo Editing

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Some of my favorite influencers have shared their tips and tricks for beautiful, light, and bright photos. And, I was so grateful for them sharing this info. So, I’m passing it along to all of you. First we’ll start with tips for great photos. Then, we will dive into the two tools that I use to edit my photos before I post them online.

First things first, tips for a great photo:

1. Use Natural Light – I think the best photos are taken in natural light. Ideally, earlier in the morning, or later in the day (late afternoon/evening) when the sunlight isn’t too harsh. For indoor photos of people, turn off all the lights in the house – and get near a window. This lets the natural light do it’s thing. From there, you can always brighten up with Lightroom (one of the tools I love) if you feel like it’s too dark without the lights on.

2. Clear the clutter – This one is easy, but so often overlooked! If you’re taking pics of kids, or people, or something in your house, get rid of all the clutter in the background! If you push any toys or junk out of the frame of the photo, the eye will draw to the subject of the photo. And, the image will look clean and crisp! *Note – this one doesn’t really matter if your just trying to capture memories. Capture memories! Capture real life. Let it be messy. But, if it’s for a Holiday Card, or for another reason you want a professional looking crisp photo, clear the clutter. 🙂

3. Take a million pics! – Seriously, to get one good photo, especially of a family or kids, it’s going to take a lot of tries. Be ok with taking 20 pics to find the ONE you want to edit and share. Plus, sometimes when you take a ton, you end up getting a really good “real” and natural photo of the kids or you in your element that you wouldn’t get if you only took 2 or 3 pics.

Ok, now for the best tools I have found to easily edit pics on the go. Seriously, it takes me 1-5 minutes to edit a picture. And these are the two best tools I know of:

1. Lightroom (cost: I use the free version. Upgraded version is $9.99/month). This tool allows you to edit exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks, as well as adjust the temp, tint, and vibrance. You can also crop with the basic version of this tool. For light and bright photos: up the exposure, decrease the contrast, always get rid of a lot of the “shadow” and increase the “whites.”

2. FaceTune (cost: $2.99 – worth it) : I use FaceTune for 2 things: to blur the background of a photo, and to brighten the “whites.”

So, here’s the deal: FaceTune can technically be used to blur out wrinkles, fix blemishes, whiten teeth, etc. I don’t do any of that (anymore). I believe we already filter ourselves and our images enough – smoothing wrinkles and whitening teeth is too much. It’s too fake.

That being said, I for sure use it to edit my photos. The “blur background” tool is really easy to use, and I like to use the “whiten” tool to make my whites brighter. (Like if I have a white kitchen in the background – I will use it to make the white’s pop).

I also occasionally use FaceTune to “patch” something like a stain on the kids’ shirts, or a spill on the ground that looks messy. (I did this for our Christmas card this year – we were standing in front of a big old mural, and the gravel on the ground had a bunch of dirt spots and spills – I just made them all one color so the image would be cleaner and so that people could focus on the cute saying on the wall and the people in the picture, instead of the dirt on the ground).

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Ok, that’s it! These are my tips to get (what I believe to be) great photos! Have a great day everyone.

Oh… and please let me know if you found this useful. Either here, by commenting on the blog, or on the original instagram post. I would SO appreciate it. xo.