I’m deviating from iPhone-specific photo examples today, but it's because my Nikon camera photo is serving as a perfect example to illustrate this teaching point.

→ Read on, knowing that this also applies to phone cameras.

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Someone recently noted that for them editing their photos seemed like cheating. It felt like it was distorting reality and producing a false version of what the camera had truly captured.

I actually think the opposite.

When editing is done well, it creates an even truer version of the original scene.

For the majority of photos, editing is required to bring more honour, truthfulness and authenticity to an image.

Take this photo for example:

The unedited straight-out-of-camera version looks bland and washed out. You can see the couple but you can’t see much colour or texture in the sky and water.

It’s not because there wasn’t any colour or texture there.

It's because I overexposed the photo (I forced the camera to take a brighter photo) so that we could see the details in the people.

But overexposing the photo means I also made the sky way too bright, minimizing a lot of its colour, texture and detail.

Since the people are in darker light (shadow side) and the sky is so much brighter than them, I can’t show both the detail in the people at the same time as the detail in the sky.

This is where editing comes in.

When I brought the photo in Lightroom, I darkened the sky and water in order to show more of its true colour and texture, with less over-brightness.

Selective editing allows me to darken the sky without also making the people too dark at the same time. Doing this type of selective editing is something you can’t do in camera.

That’s why Lightroom editing is a crucial step.

It’s the second half of the work process after you're done with the camera part.

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The human eye sees so much more beauty than the camera does.

The human eye can make auto brightness adjustments to a scene much more subtly and fully than a camera can. (Yes, even a professional camera).

The eye will see a bright sky and the brain will naturally darken it, while simultaneously showing more detail and brightness in the people’s faces.

The human eye knows how to balance a light-complex scene better than a camera can. The eye does it on the spot for us!

That’s why when we look at a sunset in real life we always think:

“Wow, this is gorgeous. My camera is not doing it justice!”

And that’s true - your camera can’t do justice to a sunset scene with people in it. It needs some editing work to help it get closer to reality.

So there you have it:

An edited photo like this one is closer to true life than the unedited straight-out-of-camera bland photo that it originally took.

This is why I teach photo editing with as much passion as photo taking. Photography is so much more than a good camera with good settings. The second half of the important work happens in your editing software.

earn how to edit your iPhone photos using Lightroom Mobile (a free editing app) here:
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Hi I'm Gabrielle. I run a full time photography business in Winnipeg, specializing in portrait and commercial photography. This newsletter started with my passion for helping everyday people realize their full photography potential. With a bit of technical and creative help, you too can take better photos with the phone camera you already have.

Find more of my resources here:

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Gabrielle Touchette Photography

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