Lessons

Lesson Info

Editing Demo: Stylized Editing/ Finding your editing Style

Let's talk about stylized editing. I kind of want to also talk about finding your editing style and I've been sort of mentioning that as we have been going along here. Now, you're sort of learning the basics of what I do. We got into my style a little bit with the black and whites. And you've also been kind of privy to my natural style. I would say that as a photographer personally, I'm probably chosen to be a photographer, more for the Candids and more for the compositions and the black and whites more than anything I've heard as a photographer. Now, you kind of have to discover what it is that separates you from everyone else. Is it your style? Specifically? There are a lot of wedding photographers that I know where their editing style, their tones, their colors um along with their compositions and how they shoot things are what sets them apart, but more than anything, it is those colors and tones and the editing and the post and the look right. There are some trending looks througho...

ut wedding photography and there has been since I've been doing wedding photography for 17 years now. And before that, I assisted a lot of wedding photographers as second shooters and as uh assistance. And I've seen a lot of trends go through. Our Instagram has had a huge influence all social media on, you know, like the colors, the tones, how things look, the hats, the spray bottles, the, all the things, the reflections, there's ebbs and flows to the styles of wedding photography. And so as you develop your style, you can see what's popular maybe in your area around the world or what I advise is pick a style and sort of an art that really is you right. That's what I've done. I've really, I love to edit black and whites and I think they look amazing. Now if I was doing that as a job and I didn't like doing that, I wouldn't go very far. I want to be editing and doing things that I want to do that I enjoy. And there's plenty of room for wedding photographers because we talked about it before. They're going to hire you for your style and your style is different from someone else and that's the same in post and editing. So let's go quickly. I brought up our gallery that we've sort of been editing over the last few sessions and I wanted to show you if we're in the develop mode. On the left side, I've downloaded some presets from 2021. Um And these are presets that were made by another wedding photography couple. They sell these presets. I think I bought them a while ago just to see and just to play around. But I want to use them to show you, um, what their sort of style or how you could start with presets going. Um, this is sort of their original look. Right. They've created this preset and I'm applying it over my edits already. So it might be a little crunchier than um more contrasty than it would be. Normally, you would wanna originally apply that here. Let's click our thing and we'll reset it completely. That's my raw photo, right? Let's go back to the crop that we like and then let's apply there still a little dark, right? So if I applied their preset and their style, I would still bring it up a little bit. And that's a style. That's not my style. Like if we go back command Z command Z, we're back at the ra and then we're back at my style which is a little brighter, a little, a little more punchier and, and more natural. The their, their preset is a little aggressive, but it's a style and it looks awesome. Um It just depends on how you want to do it and you can go through. So there's original, original light, a little less contrasty, original alternative and see all these different presets that they have that really change the look of the photo. Oh I kind of like that one. Autumn, autumn light. This one's nice because it's desaturated. It's a little flat on the image itself. And, you know, these, these are not bad. I actually really like this indoor light one. Let's try that. Let's reset. Let's go to our crop will come down. And the reason I'm showing you these presets is because, you know, that's how you show style indoor. Where was it? Indoor light? That's kind of cool. That's somewhere between our black and white and color and desaturate again, I would bring it up. I would maybe add a little bit more contrast and I would bring back some warmth and yeah, maybe bring down the clarity a little bit. You can see what their edits are. You'll, you'll see. And that's also a really good way to learn is if you apply a preset to find your style, look at all the color change. We know we haven't talked about all this because it's pretty advanced, but they've really dialed in the exact tone and color they're looking for. And I bet, uh, if we go to their curves, yeah, see, they've also messed with their curve quite a bit. Now, this is where you can really separate yourself and find what you're looking for is messing with the curves getting deep into changing the color. It's a little bit more advanced than what we're doing for this course. But it's something that to be aware of. They've also added some grain to make it look very specific to them. So I've taken their preset and I've adjusted it to how I like it. I'm going to now copy their preset. Say this is my style, say I've figured this out and I'm going to one of my other images. Let's reset our image completely and we've lost the mask, which is not exciting because we did a lot of work on that. We'll adjust the crop and then let's paste what we've done. Boom. Now, you can see how these two images now have a very similar vibe, right? They are very similar in tonality and color. And I'm starting to create my look. If I were doing this and you want to start to apply that, let's do that to one of our girls, our brides, we'll reset it all again. We've lost our masks. So it's a little deeper in the face, but we won't worry about we'll paste and there we go. Now, we know that I would probably bring this up a little bit and I would soften her skin and we would definitely go in and clean up uh the eyes that we had done before. But if we compare the two to, you know, you can tell I never use this. If we compare the two photos, these styles are the same, right? And these are, these are the couples that are together, right? So we would deliver these images and they have a sort of muted tone style. Um, that is for this photographer or this edit, that's the thing with editing, right? You can go extreme, you can go natural, you can go, you can go in any direction and, and that's kind of like music, right? Like you're playing your own tonality, you're playing your own instrument and that's what you're sort of being hired for. Let's see if we can apply to this one same thing. Right. We've kinda added, I'm gonna warm this one up a little bit just to bring your skin tone. But it's got similar vi it's got that tone curve, it's got their color correction. Um, and it's got a little bit of, let's see. Yep. It's got a little bit of grain and I would add a little bit of noise reduction because I don't really like the grain that much. That's not my style again. But see how these are, are matching a little bit more tonality and they're a little bit more extreme and they've got a little bit more art and a little bit more punch and a little bit more just style. Um, I think that that's awesome. If that's your market, you should go for it. You have to be careful with your style. If you go too extreme in the area that you're living in, people may not be interested in hiring you. If you go too natural and boring, it's natural and boring. Um, I think that's what has allowed me to gain a lot of clients in the sense that my black and whites are sort of my style. And I've gotten a lot of, um, you know, editing style. I've gotten a lot of praise and people interested in me delivering a lot of black and whites. But at the same time, um they also like the way I shoot, they like the Candids that I take. So there's style in all these things, right? There's a style in the way you shoot, there's a style in how you shoot and there's a style in what you shoot and also in your editing. So developing it is, is a, is a very good way to get started. How do you get there? You can use those presets to see what you like, but a lot of it needs to come from your own inspiration, right? Like go research, see what you like once you find what you like, try to get there. Like if we decided that we really enjoy this sort of style on the left. Wow, we really like what they're doing here. That's awesome. Maybe I'll go down to this comparison view and you saw what I did earlier, I basically went from single to comparison and then I dragged this photo up to here so we can see it now active on the right is what we're editing and the reference is on the left. Now, if I want to get to this place. I wanna see if I can actually mimic their style by adjusting things. I already know that what they did. They changed the curves quite a bit and they desaturated it a little bit and bleed it. And then I know they took out a lot of red and orange, yellow. This feels like a lot. But you would get to the point where you would try and find basically how they did it or you would just play around in advanced editing and get to the point where you liked the style. What else do they added grain? Where was the grain down here? They added grain, which I'm not a big fan of. But if I did like it, you would just try and get to this point, right? You would try and get to a point where you are comfortable and creating your own style. See, I like having warmer skin than anything and that would be closer to my style and a really good way to get to the, to the, to the point of liking it. So you can import a photo that you like and see if you can create your own style and get it close enough to it. Um I'm just playing around now. It's close. Those almost are similar, I feel like their background uh is a little bit darker and their greens are probably a little bit deeper um in saturation. But you know, having a place where you feel comfortable in your own style, matching someone else don't steal someone's style, but definitely use it for inspiration and play around and see if you can find that. Once I've found that I've kind of found my look here. Um I feel like pretty comfortable applying it. I can copy and paste it or I can go over here and create my own preset, right? Create preset. And basically, it's gonna take all the edits that I just did. And I'm gonna say this is a class preset test and I already have my own group of presets uh in William Carnahan presets. But we can also make user presets which are up here. And I've used for my second when I have second shot, I have second shot for a photographer named Mel Bell and she sent me her preset and so I applied it to a lot of my photos so that I could send her some edits already done and in her style. So she didn't have to do as much work, but it'll take all your presets and create and now have a class preset that I can then go to uh another photo and we can just apply our class preset and there we go. So it's a very quick way to create your style, save it and apply it to everything else. Um And that's pretty good. So get in there practice test, look for your own style, develop it, it's going to take time, give yourself some patience, see what you like, see what you don't like, take notes about it. And uh and you know, it, it takes time. I would say I didn't really develop my shooting style. My, it's taken years, decade even to really be comfortable with my black and whites, my color, my natural stuff. I've even gone across cameras just to get to the style that I wanted to get to. And I finally landed after 10 years with the right camera system. I want the system of editing. Um, it takes time and wedding photography hadn't been my full time job, but if it is, you'll get there faster uh than not. So let's go on to the next lesson.