It's Photo Finish Friday!!!! HECK YEAH! It is so exciting for me that Katiusca of Between These Stitches is back to share her photo brilliance with us. From lighting to angles to staging and composition - I know my own photography skills have improved so much already by following these tips. Have you all been following along this series and seeing improvements? Let us know in the comments!

So far we have discussed, Photography as light, how to use that light and what kinds of backgrounds and angles work best with your handcrafted fiber items. Today I wanted to talk to you about editing your images for Instagram, your blog, or any other social media platform you may use.

You may have noticed that there are times when you take a picture and the picture looks dull or lifeless.  You may think this image is not "instagram-worthy."  This type of reaction makes you think that you just don't have a good image.  However, your initial reaction to an image may be off simply because you haven't edited your image.  Editing a photo is usually what takes a photo from dull to amazing. Because there are so many ways to edit an image I will be discussing the ways I do it and I will break down editing your images into three posts. The first post will be this one, where I discuss what I edit in an image, and how to edit using your phones native camera app. The second one will be on editing images with third party app. Lastly, the third post will be on editing your photos on your computer.

Today I will talk about editing images on your phone because let's face it, most of us take pictures with our phones.  Because I am an iPhone user my references will be to apps I have personally used on my iPhone. Make sure you check the Android app store to see if an app that I mention exists on in that app store. 

Ok, on to editing with your camera phone. 

There are two ways to edit on your camera phone, first is with the native camera app to your phone and the second is with third party app providers.  For the most part, I use my native camera app to edit my images. I used to use various apps (which I will mention in a different post) to edit my images.  But because of my work as a photographer I don't anymore.  The reason for this is because when I edit an image I am only looking to edit certain things on my image and for the most part those things don't change.  While many apps provide a lot of functionality and filters, I'm only interested in editing the exposure, which we talk about in the Exposure post here, the blacks, color, highlights or shadows of an image.  Let's go over these one by one.  

Exposure

First, we already discussed Exposure but for the sake of this post, let's remember that exposure is the amount of light your image has when you take a photo.  Depending on the look you want your image to have you may want a brighter exposure or a dimmer exposure.  Dark and moody means less light while bright and airy means more light. 

Shadows and Highlights

The shadows and highlights in an image discuss the tonal range of the image.  Shadows are the darkest parts of an image which can be intentional or not.  Highlights are the brightest area of a photo, which again, can be intentional or not.  I like to control the highlights in an image to avoid any areas from being too bright. I also like to manipulate the shadows when necessary so that what I want hidden/dark stays that way or becomes more bright.  When editing highlights or shadows, you need to be careful with that you do not lose details of your image. 

The Blacks

The blacks are the darkest tones of an image.  I like to adjust my blacks because doing so helps lines and certain details come to life and look more crisp. 

Below I have a video that I created editing an image with my native camera app so that you can see how I take and edit an image from start to finish. 

Do you have any questions? Did seeing the backgrounds and how I edit help? Let me know!  Otherwise, see you next week with my favorite photo editing apps. 

-Katiusca