The terms you are about to learn today apply to most photo editing applications just like in https://photolemur.com/blog/best-photo-management-software for instance. This should be helpful to you no matter what photo editing software you are using. When you take a photo in the editing software, you can adjust the brightness, shadows, highlights, etc.
This can have a dramatic effect on the appearance of your photos. Therefore, it is essential that you understand the basic terms and how they will affect your photos.
Exposure
Also known as brightness, this is one of the most basic and essential editing tools when editing your photos. This determines how light or dark the entire image is. Dragging this slider up brightens the entire image while dragging the slider down darkens the image. It is important to remember not to overuse this feature.
Pulling the exposure slider up too much will blow out your highlights (such as the sky) in your image and overexpose your photo. If you reduce the slider excessively, the image will darken, and the details in the shadows (trees, shadows, etc.) will no longer appear. This will result in your image being too underexposed.
Contrast
Contrast increases the number of black and white pixels in an image. If an image has more black and white pixels, the image will “burst,” but the finer details in the highlights and shadows will be lost, and if you overdo this slider, the image quality will be degraded. This setting can be useful for certain types of images. These can be city photos, street photography, and product photography. This is where people want these photos to look a little over the top and a little more popular, but you need to be careful not to overdo this.
Just like with the “Highlights” option, I suggest that you increase it a bit to add some “pop” to the image, but not to the point where the image as a whole looks overhauled and filtered.
Highlights
The Highlights option controls how light or dark the lighter areas of your image are. This usually adjusts the brightness in the clouds, parts of the image illuminated by a light source, or parts of your images with less contrast. Increasing this setting will brighten the lighter parts of your image, which can cause them to be blown out and overexposed. Decreasing this setting will darken the lighter parts of the photo, which can cause them to be underexposed, and then you won’t be able to see the details in those parts of the picture. In my opinion, you should turn down the highlights a bit, especially for pictures taken in broad daylight.
This is because the image is likely to be a little overexposed by default, and lowering the highlights will restore all of the detail in the otherwise “blown out” sections of the photo.
Saturation
Finally, we have satiety. Saturation determines how strong the colors are in your image. As you increase the saturation, the colors in your image become more prominent and emphasized. If you increase the saturation too much, your image may look like something out of a fantasy, and you risk compromising the image quality. If you decrease the saturation, your picture may look black or white, and the colors will be far less emphasized in your photo. This can be helpful when you want to create a specific theme or aesthetic in your photos. You can also check out site like https://photolemur.com/ for more guide.
