Developing Online Instructional Resources

Course Handout: Basic Photo Editing Terminologies

Once a photograph is in digital form, you can store it on your computer or mobile

device and then edit or manipulate it with a photo-editing program. Digital image

manipulation offers almost limitless possibilities. These programs as times can be

overwhelming for some people. However anyone can learn and apply some basic

photo editing techniques, which can improve the quality of your digital images.

White balance

Simply put white balance in digital photography means adjusting colours so that

the image looks more natural. While our brains automatically process the colours

for us in a smart way, digital cameras can only guess what the colour temperature

is by watching the ambient light. At times the white balance might not be correct

and results in pictures appearing to be blue or yellow in colour.

Correct White balance

Incorrect White balance

Warm light and Cool light

Since each of us sees colour slightly differently, colour temperature is used to refer

the colour we perceive light to be. This is measured on a standard scale of Kelvins

(K). A low Kelvin value eg. Below 4000K is referred to as warm light whereas, a high

Kelvin value eg. Above 4000K is cool light. It is important to note that warm light is

associated with dusk while cool light can be found at dawn. Artificial lighting can also

be used to create the desired colour temperature.

Warmth is seen as being yellow, orange and red. When these tones are prevalent

within a photo is described as being warm toned. A cool toned photo has colours

that are predominantly blue.

Warm Cool
Exposure

Exposure refers to the amount of light used in capturing the image. If a photo is captured
without enough light is becomes dark or underexposed. Overexposure on the other hand
refers when then there is too much capture in the image. The exposure tool in the editing
software compensates for when there is too much or too light.

Underexposed

Adjusted Exposure

Overexposed
Brightness

This control uniformly changes all the colours, from extremely light (white) to

extremely dark (black). You can use it to make the overall picture lighter or darker,

note that it does not brighten or darken selective areas.

Original Photo

Increased Brightness
Contrast

The amount of contrast in a photo refers to the difference between its lightest and

darkest areas. By using the contrast tool and increasing contrast, this results in the

light areas of the photo becoming lighter and dark areas darker. In addition it

makes the details of the photo clearer.

Original photo

Increased contrast
Saturation

Saturation refers to the intensity of a colour. The higher the saturation of a colour,

the more vivid it is. The lower the saturation of a colour, the closer it is to gray.

Lowering the saturation of a photo can have a “muting” or calming effect, while

increasing it can increase the feel of the vividness of the scene. This tool affects all

areas of the photo. It is important not to over-saturate a photo, as sometimes it

creates unnatural colours.

Undersaturated

Oversaturated
Vibrance

Vibrance is quite similar to saturation. However the difference is, increasing it

increases the saturation of less-saturated colours more than the colours that are

already saturated. Simply put, the vibrancy tool can be used to subtly add more

colour to a photo. Additionally, adjusting the vibrance prevents skin tones from

becoming over saturated.

Original Photo

Increased Vibrance
Highlights and Shadows

The highlight of photo refers to the lightest area that is not pure white. The

shadows are the area of the photo that is not completely black. By using the

highlights and shadows tool, one can recover overexposed regions of a photo,

bringing them back into detail. Increasing or decreasing the highlights/shadows will

affect only the shadows or highlights of the image.

Overexposed
photo

Decreased
Highlight and
Shadow
Crop and Rotate

Use cropping to remove unwanted or unnecessary elements, to focus attention on

the most important part of your photo, change the perspective, or to improve the
photo’s aesthetics. Deliberately tilting a photo with the rotate tool can sometimes
give it a more striking, unexpected look or straighten the horizons which may exist in
your picture.

Original Photo

Cropped Photo
Original Photo Tilted Photo