Are you familiar with the acronym KISS?

It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. It can pretty much be applied to anything in life.

And if you are in a business where you need to constantly edit photos, then keeping it simple should be your main mantra, not only to save time but to save your sanity.

In this guide, we’ll be covering certain benefits of simplifying your photo editing with the correct platform.

There are several steps involved with the photo editing process: taking the photo, uploading it to your computer, editing it in a photo editor, and saving it to share on social media.

The problem often lies in that third step, the editor program you decide to use.

Using an editor that has a great user flow and experience can streamline your process — reducing the time it takes to edit a photo, allowing you to focus on other parts of your business.

How Long Should Photo Editing Take?

There’s a common misconception that photo editing should take a certain amount of time.

However, the actual time spent should depend on what you’re going for and what your needs are. If you’re just making some minor edits to brighten the color, maybe only 5-10 minutes at most is necessary. But if you’re looking to achieve a certain mood or tone, that can take much longer.

For example, if you want the sky in the background to be bluer than blue, it might take much more time than just applying a filter over the top of the original image.

Photo editing with the correct editor can reduce your time drastically.

But before we touch on what to look for within a photo editor, let’s cover some of the obvious benefits of using an editor.

Benefits of Using a Photo Editor

Here are 3 simple benefits of using a photo editor.

1. Quickly crop and rotate your photos

Cropping is a tool that editors have at their disposal. This allows you to focus on the subject of your photo by removing unnecessary parts. Rotating is also a great tool, especially if the shot was taken at an angle.

2. Change the perspective of your photos

The perspective tool lets you quickly turn your photo into what it would look like if looking at the subject through different types of camera lenses. This can create a portrait, landscape, or even a fish-eye look.

3. Turn your photo into artwork

One of the fun features an editor has is the ability to turn a photo into art. They work by taking what colors are in your photo and applying them to lines and typography – creating a hybrid image with beautiful results.

What to Look for in a Photo Editor?

So now that we know the benefits of photo editing, let’s cover what to look for in a photo editor.

When it comes to photo editors, there are 3 things you should look for:

1. The Number of Features

Depending on your needs and the type of photography you capture, editors can offer many different types of features, with some even offering exclusive features such as cartoonizers.

Some might specialize in creating art out of photos while others are more simple editors that just enhance the image itself. So it’s important to read over the features before investing time and money into an editor.

2. How Easy Is It to Use?

The best editors will have an intuitive UI that you can just start using. There are no manuals or tutorials necessary to get up and running.

If you are a personal brand running your own business, you don’t have time to learn all the bells and whistles of a program such as Photoshop if you are just going to be using it for edits.

The User Experience

Photo editing can be fun, but having an easy-to-use interface makes it even more enjoyable. Having a well-thought-out user experience allows you to improve your workflow and your overall edits. So look for user experience to ensure the editor you pick allows for a great experience. 

3. How Customizable Is It? 

Depending on your needs, you might want more customization options than others. Look for things like color controls, detailing, vignetting, etc.

Photo editing has many benefits, and using the right editor can help you get there faster and with better results. So next time you’re editing a photo, try putting it through a well-streamlined editor to see if it makes all the difference. 

Colorcinch Covers It All

Colorcinch has all of these features and more. This free Adobe Photoshop alternative is a great platform for any business owner. It allows you to do everything mentioned above — crop, rotate, add perspective, apply effects and filters, and turn your photo into art with built-in graphics and templates.

The best part is, it’s all available for free. With Colorcinch you can save time and money while still achieving professional results.

Photo editing has never been simpler. 

The post Photo Editing Taking Too Long? Simplify It appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Colorcinch offers a ton of great conversion and enhancement tools that can put the “wow” back into your pictures.

One of those tools is the photo editor. It has a set of robust but simple features to enhance the color and vibrance of an image. We’ll show you how this is done.

The Thing With Color

Color is one of the most vital elements of an image. That is because color attracts interest and stirs emotions.

However, we do not take perfect pictures all the time. Some end up dull with flat colors.

Fortunately, photos can be enhanced in Colorcinch with regard to important color attributes. These include hue, saturation, temperature, and vibrance.

Hue

Hue refers to the base color in the color spectrum. These are the primary (blue, yellow, red) and secondary colors (green, orange, violet).

There is a dominant hue in every color. For instance, for magenta the base color is violet. For ruby, it’s red and so forth.

Why should you use the Hue tool? To change the colors in photos (radical adjustments) and to correct white balance or reduce color cast (finer adjustments).

Let’s see the effect of tweaking the Hue slider.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu appears on the left panel. Under Enhance click Color.

Step 2

Sliders for Hue, Saturation, and Temperature appear. Move Hue slider -30° to the left and see the shift in colors. On the other hand, if you move the Hue slider to the right by 30° this also results in dramatic color change.

Step 3

An incremental adjustment of just -5° reduces the dominant green and reveals more reddish-brown. Base colors have become much more natural and balanced.

Step 4

If satisfied with the results click Apply and then Save the image (see photo in Step 3) to your computer or Colorcinch account. If you need to make other adjustments, simply go back to the Edit menu.

Saturation

Saturation deals with color intensity. When saturation is pushed up, it uniformly increases the vividness of all the colors in a picture.

How do you know if an image needs a saturation boost? If it has drab colors or looks somewhat grayish, a saturation tweak can help.

Let’s enhance an image using the saturation tool.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu appears on the left panel. Under Enhance click Color to get to the Hue, Saturation, and Temperature sliders.

Step 2

Move the Saturation slider by 50 to the right. Notice the immediate color boost.

Step 3

Now see what happens when the slider is moved to the left by -50. Colors have been drastically muted. Moving the slider all the way down to -100 will remove colors altogether.

Step 4

If satisfied with the color saturation in Step 2, click Apply and Save the image.

Temperature

Temperature pertains to the color of light. This can be warm (red, yellow, orange) or cool colors (blue, green, magenta).

Color temperature is associated with white balance. Our eyes can accurately perceive white and automatically adjust even under varied light sources. The camera cannot.

Hence, the camera may produce an image that has a tint or color cast. The Temperature tool corrects white balance so that white appears as such and is not tinted.

This is how it works: 

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu > Enhance set > Color tool > Temperature slider set at 0 in the middle. Observe the bluish tint that surrounds the flamingos.

Step 2

Move the Temperature slider to the right by 30. The bluish haze disappears and the image gets just a bit lighter and warmer. This could be a more ideal color temperature since flamingos thrive in tropical regions.

Step 3

If results are to your liking click Apply and then Save image.

Vibrance

Vibrance lets you intensify muted colors while keeping saturated colors unaffected. It gives you similar results to that of Saturation – richer and more vivid images.

However, unlike Saturation, boosting Vibrance all the way up won’t give you an oversaturated effect. It works selectively by enhancing more the lower intensity colors. You can consider Vibrance as a subtler version of Saturation.

Here’s how to use this tool.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit > Enhance > Click Vibrance.

Step 2

The Vibrance slider is normally set at 30%. Crank the slider to the right up to 80% and you see a discreet but discernible  improvement in colors.

Step 3

Click Apply then Save image. If you need to make more adjustments, go back to Edit.

In Summary

Play and experiment with Hue, Saturation, Temperature, and Vibrance. It’s so easy to get full, deep colors that pop out.

The photo editor makes it fun and stress-free while giving you professional-level results. But don’t just take our word for it. Go for a test drive. Try Colorcinch now. It’s free!

We hope you were enlightened by this tutorial. Watch out for more guided tours of Colorcinch features in our next post.

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