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Editing on your iPhone

So I use a program called VSCO or visco, I've heard people refer to it different ways and I still don't know what it is. That's it, stop using filters at full strength. The end. (audience laughs) The problem is, most people go in to Instagram and they're like I'm gonna put this one on, and then this one and then this one and look how much better it looks. And it looks like a filtered picture, it is a sign to professional photographers that someone who is not professional was dealing with this image. And it also is something that you don't want to change the colors of your product too much, that's really important. People need to know what color item they're getting, whether it's for their home or where to wear, because if it looks blue and it shows up taupe, they're gonna be really disappointed. So yes. The brightness level on your phone, where should you have that typically set at, because I know I keep mine a little bit brighter, but when you're editing, should you have it... So ...

just kind of like with cameras, calibration can be a little bit different, so it definitely is something that you have to look at on your phone then look at on your computer, really see and then maybe try even printing one and see what the difference is between the three and adjust for that so that you're really looking at what's going to happen, because what you guys see up on the screen here is different than what I'm seeing on my phone, so it may have seemed brighter to you, but that's because they are calibrated for filming and I'm calibrated for how I know it's gonna look on my computer. So it is a little bit tricker, there's definitely not like a do this sort of answer, but yes that was a good question. Okay so this is the app, and right now you're seeing my library, and if I wanted to bring in one of the images that we shot today, let's maybe do one of these. I can just hit that plus sign, and then I go in and I start looking at what I want, and all I have to do is just select by tapping it, exactly what I want to edit. And I can go through and pick out multiples at once, or just do one at a time, but for our purposes today we'll pick a few, let's try one of these and one of these, okay. And I hit the check and they all come in to my library. So then I would just pick what I want to edit and let's start out with this because we can show you how to rotate. Okay so you're gonna see these little icons at the bottom. I'm gonna pick the little brush and tool, and now these are where all of your filters show up. So this is what starts getting sort of confusing to people, a lot of times they feel like they have to pick one, you don't. Also if there's a few that you really really love, if you are going to use filters, I'd recommend picking a few that you really love so that you can keep a consistent look on Instagram. Because when you look at something in a grid like that, and it's all different, you've used 20 different filters and one's green and one's pink and one's blue, it just feels like chaos, and it's hard to keep a consistent look. But you don't have to use a filter, so you can press that little arrow, and go right into the tools. So this is another place where people start to get overwhelmed because they don't know what all these little things mean, so let's go over them. The first is your brightness or your exposure, and I can really lighten something up, or I can make it darker, and go right there. I generally with my phone know I usually brighten it just slightly, and that's just personal preference. I love a contrasty image, I'm not a big fan of flat, but some people really love that flat look and it can really work but for me it's just not appealing. So I always usually add a little bit of contrast into my images, okay. This is where you can straighten, so if you did get your lines slightly off and you didn't shoot square you can slightly adjust, but I do recommend trying to keep it as straight as you can and not waiting because you then start cropping into your image. Okay this is the crop tool so we can then go in and crop for whatever medium we're using. But before I do that, I am gonna go back and in the straighten tool, you see this little diamond shape, I can just flip, so I can go through and make it any orientation I want. But now we're right. Okay so we've straightened it up, our next tool is sharpen, I do sharpen a lot at a three or a four generally, I want things to be really crisp and really sharp. If I'm gonna make everything sharp with my iPhone then I want it to look really sharp, I don't want it to look like it was an accident, I want it to look like I purposely did that. So I'm gonna sharpen it up, our next tool is saturation and depending on what it is, I try to be really careful about saturation because when something starts to get super saturated you can lose detail in the color. And then we have our highlights save, and our shadow save, so these are gonna help you out a lot if you're photographing a product that has reflection and you maybe lose some highlight area, so as I go, you can see that it kind of darkens up a highlight areas, there's not a lot of highlight areas in this image to show that so we'll do it on another image. But then our shadows we can brighten, see the difference. But again I love contrast so I rarely use that because I'll take the shadows out that I want out with the reflector and so I've already controlled that. And I really recommend doing things as physically as you can and not just depending on the editing, especially in an iPhone, you can only do so much, it's not a raw file, not all the information's there, so it is best to just do it as well as you can on your own. Temperature, so this is a really great tool if you're shooting inside, and you feel like things are just coming out a little bit cooler than you meant for them to be, so we can warm it up by going right and we can make it cooler by going left. And I know with specific people that I Instagram for, with my mind's eye, I like everything a bit cooler with them, and so I always go to that side, so all of my images are gonna look similar, in that cooler tone or pallet. Also because we shoot on white a lot, and white, if you don't get perfectly white, is going to show a lot of color. So it's gonna either look warm or it's gonna look cold, and I'd rather air on the side of cold for me. But it's different depending on your brand. Okay and then we're gonna skip some of these tools because I don't think they're that big, I hate this one, tint, I guess if you're getting a little bit of green or a little bit of magenta. And this is supposed to be for skin tone, I haven't found it to be super effective, that's another one. And then grain, why. If you want grain in your images, then shoot film, but the reason I shoot digital is because it can look so clean, so I actually really love the look of film, I really hate the look of digital trying to look like film. So it's a personal pet peeve, so if you want grain, it's okay, you can do that, but it's not my favorite. The fade is gonna lessen the contrast again. So that's what a fade does, and this is a look that a lot of people really loved with Instagram, this sort of flat matte look, and it can be really cool, but again make sure that you're consistent with it, if you decide to go with that look then go for it, but if you're gonna just put it in every once in a while, it'll kind of look funny in your thumbnails. So that was fade, these, please don't ever use these, that's all I'm gonna say about that. It adds a tint to my shadows or my highlights but it really adds a lot. So you can adjust that by double tapping and bringing it down, so if you did have something, I was wearing a green sweater and it was really adding in to the reflective areas, I could go in the highlight tint and maybe add the opposite of green which is a magenta color, but that would be the only time I would really use those, I try and stay away from those because again it takes away from the true color of the product and I don't want to do that. So let's go back and talk about what I really use. That's all the tools, but what ones do I use consistently. I usually adjust exposure, contrast, I will make sure it's straight and level and crop it the way I need to crop it, and I will sharpen it, and the last thing I usually change is the temperature, if I want it a little bit warmer or a little bit cooler, to make sure it looks like the real product. And that's it, you don't need to be going in a million different places and doing a million different things. Hopefully you've shot it well enough that you're basically sharpening it up, adding a little hint of contrast and you're good to go. Okay so once I have that then you just hit that, that saves it and now our fourth option over is this. I can save it to my camera roll, I can go right into Instagram, I can go right to Facebook, Twitter, I can email it to myself if I wanna use it on my website, and that is what makes it so easy to do it from your phone. And we didn't talk a lot about filters but I do wanna show this so if you do love the look a filter is giving you, I actually like things a little cooler, like I said, but I don't want it to be that blue, I can double tap on that as well and just use a little bit of the filter and that's how I recommend using those. You really shouldn't be using filters at full strength, because it just becomes so obvious, if someone knows this program or someone knows Instagram, they're gonna be like that's the Ludwig filter and I don't want people to recognize me by my filter, I want people to recognize me by my brand. And that is it, that is how I would edit a photo on my iPhone, and what I would do with it, there's a couple more programs, let's just click through on the PowerPoint. Apps to add text, someone was asking about that earlier, if I'd leave a space for the text, and I would. And I really like A Beautiful Mess for that. They have a lot of little shapes like this that I can add in and what I will do is put this photo in twice, so that it looks like it's a see through shape, and then I will put in my text, if I want a label kind of look, and Rhonna Farrier you can get labels as well. The Rhonna Farrier app has a little bit more decorative, use it sparingly, or people will know it's Rhonna Farrier, but she has so many good fonts and really good label shapes and things like that which can be great to add to an image. My personal preference on text is to only add it if you really, really need to. Otherwise I want the visual to stand on its own. So if it's something that people aren't gonna quite get the story enough from, or it's a sale, how am I gonna tell them it's a sale within in image without putting a sale sign or something, then I can add text to it, but generally I like to leave my images, I'm a photographer not a graphic designer, so I like my images plain and simple. Another app that I really love that's not on here is called Party Party, it's also by A Beautiful Mess. And that app creates stop motion videos for you, so you can take up to 16 images with your phone in a row, just moving your product slightly and we can make a stop motion video of your necklace coming into the image, or I've done it with Paper Bandit Press where the cards all come in, and then do a little dance and it's just by simply moving them and taking a picture and then move it a little, take a picture, and the app does it all for you after that, you just upload the pictures in, you can choose the time you want, you can choose the look you want and you can put that right into Instagram, so it's really fun every once in a while to have a great moving image in your Instagram feed without actually having to do a video. So that's called Party Party. And that is it for iPhones, I feel like when we talked about doing this segment, I really, there's nothing tricky I do with my phone, it's the way that I light it and style it, I feel that make it work, because again I could use anything and as long as I've got beautiful lighting and a good exposure, then it's gonna look good. So there's nothing too tricky about it, but I guess I feel like that's what's important to know. I'm not doing some sort of trick to make the pictures look better, I just know how it works. So I'm shooting images with shallow depth so everything is supposed to look like it's in focus, I'm using my camera to the best of my ability in that way and then I edit it and make it nice and bright, that's really important unless you're going for dark, but nice bright images attract the eye and that's it.