Photo Walk Editing

As much as I prefer to get it right in camera I have to admit there are shots that greatly benefit from a little editing in post.

While it’s better to have shot in raw when it comes to editing, if all you’re doing is some basic cropping and maybe a slight change in exposure or contrast then you can just as easily edit JPGs.

I always explain the difference between the two formats as it’s like a JPG is a baked cake. It’s iced and decorated and read to eat while a raw file is just a list of cake ingredients. Nothing has been baked or iced or decorated. It’s all up to you. JPG files will be smaller and easier to view on your phone or computer or tablet. Raw files on the other hand may not open on your devices unless you have an actual raw file editor like Lightroom or Photoshop installed.

But for most editing purposes you really don’t need Lightroom or Photoshop and for most of us shooting JPGs and letting the camera make some editing decisions is just fine.

I’ve been using Alien Skin’s Exposure 7 for years and like it very much. Same thing if you own an Olympus camera then the free raw editor OMWorkspace is more than adequate and the same for Nikon’s NX Studio. Plus there are other free and inexpensive options out there.

Okay so let’s say you’ve downloaded your images into two (or more) separate hard drives and they’re safely stored. Now is the time to view your images and make your choices on what ones you want to edit using your editing program. Most editing programs edit while not changing your original file but outputting a different edited file when you’re finished. This means your original file is never really edited and you can always go back to it.

Most editors have a fast viewing system where you can “pick” images or give them a “star” or a colour and then in the software you can set it up to show you only the picked or stared or coloured images to edit.

While it’s nice to edit every image or edit every one you’ve picked it can take hours and hours of editing. There is a faster way 🙂

Because I tend to shoot with very much the same framing and the same exposure I often pick one image and lightly edit it and then save the edits and then apply the edits to all the other picked images at once.

Then I go through the images which have gone through the group editing process and make any minor changes to individual images that may not have turned out so well being edited as part of the group. This can save an enormous amount of time.

To do basic editing almost any computer or tablet will get the job done. But if you’re shooting raw images which are significantly larger and making lots of edits (especially if you’re getting better at this and starting to add “layers” to your editing and making significant changes to the image you’re going to want a better much more robust computer.

When it comes to photography I’ve used Apple machines forever (starting with an SE/30 which goes way back) like the MacBook Pro and now a Mac Mini M2 and I highly recommend them for photo or video editing.

When it comes to PCs a gaming laptop with a separate graphics card usually works out pretty well.

In either format you’re going to want as fast processor as you can afford and at least 16-gigs with 32-gigs preferable of RAM. None of this is cheap but there’s nothing as frustrating as a slow computer when it comes to editing.

Once you have your selected images edited then it’s great fun to put them in an online gallery (I have mine in Smugmug at www.peterwest.ca) and share the link with friends or post them to our club’s FaceBook group page for your fellow club members to enjoy your photographic artwork as well.