PP · Post-Processing
The Basic Edits Every Photo Needs, In Order
Most photos only need a handful of adjustments to look finished. This is the order that stops you from undoing your own work halfway through.
Diagrams
Almost every photo needs the same short list of adjustments, and the order matters more than the exact settings. Start with the histogram rather than the image itself. Push exposure until the brightest important highlight sits just beneath the right edge, then set white balance: a gray-card eyedropper if you have one, otherwise something known to be neutral. Only judge contrast after exposure and white balance are settled, because both of them change how contrast reads to the eye.
Next comes tonal recovery. Pull highlights down to bring back sky and cloud detail, lift shadows to open up dark areas, but leave some true black so the image does not look flat and hazy. The whites and blacks sliders set your clipping points: nudge whites up until the brightest tones are nearly clipping, and blacks down until the darkest are nearly clipping. Then add local contrast with a tone curve. The clarity slider also adds midtone contrast, but it is a blunt instrument compared with a curve.
Presence and color come third. Clarity works well around plus 10 to 20 for landscapes but should go negative for portraits, where it roughens skin; texture is the gentler alternative and is safer for fine detail. Dehaze is powerful and easy to overdo, so stay under about 15 unless the frame is genuinely hazy. Choose vibrance over saturation, because vibrance protects skin tones while saturation pushes every color in the frame equally hard.
Finish with crop and local adjustments. Straighten the horizon and crop before you place graduated or radial masks, so the masks land where you expect them to. Use graduated filters for skies, radial filters to draw the eye, and brush adjustments for dodging and burning. Apply lens corrections and remove chromatic aberration last, then export. One thing you should never do is reorder the sequence: fixing white balance after you have already graded color means grading the image twice, and the second pass always fights the first.
Key points
- Judge exposure against the histogram, not the screen, and set white balance before contrast.
- Set whites and blacks so the brightest and darkest tones nearly clip, keeping some true black.
- Use clarity positively for landscapes and negatively for portraits; prefer vibrance over saturation.
- Crop and straighten before placing local masks so the masks land where you intended.
