This article summarizes the most important steps to incorporate into your digital photo editing workflow (aka "post-processing workflow"). It isn't necessarily a procedure that you'll want to implement with all of your photos, but whenever you want to get that "keeper" looking just right, these steps can make all the difference.
Each is listed roughly in the order that they should be applied:
- White Balance - temperature and tint adjustment sliders
- Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
- Noise Reduction - during RAW development or using external software
- Lens Corrections - distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberrations
- Detail - capture sharpening and local contrast enhancement
- Contrast - black point, levels and curves tools
- Framing - straighten and crop
- Refinements - color adjustments and selective enhancments
- Resizing - enlarge for a print or downsize for the web or email
- Output Sharpening - customized for your subject matter and print/screen size