Design & Style, Arts & Entertainment

Demo: Editing Your Photos

Tyler Mitchell

Lesson time 12:27 min

Tyler shares his method for selecting and processing his images.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Narrow Down Your Edit · Processing Images

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - So now we've shot all our materials, so we're going to be editing. We're going to be deciding what photos are final and make the cut and which don't. When you're editing, the photo that you choose should usually-- and hopefully it's one photo, either per setup or one photo per location or one photo per look-- it is the most kind of concise, or it's the photo that sums up for you the emotion you were trying to capture. I think most people tend to over-include stuff. Editing is about being decisive. And unfortunately, it's about getting rid of photos that you might like. I try and narrow things down as much as I possibly can. I think it's important when you're editing to really get down to exactly the photo that you need or that you want. Anything else can be kind of left in the trash, I suppose. [MUSIC PLAYING] Right now we're going to use Bridge to select everything and then I'll use Photoshop for any kind of color touchups or retouching. So I'll bring up the pictures we shot earlier of Jess. And basically, I will start to bring all the images of one look together into one sequence. I'll usually sort it by filename here. I'll start to make a little order for myself so I can really see everything. See I'm bringing all the images of her with the red look together and all the images of her in the black look together as well. And then any images like this, where they're behind the scenes, I'll go ahead and delete from my folder. So you're already starting to edit by getting rid of the ones you know you don't want. Just cleaning it up so the whole folder can make sense to you. Yeah, there you go. So here's all the images of the red look. There is all the images of the black look. Now we can start to flip through and make our selects. So I'll start to basically star the ones that I like. You'll see a star pop up in the bottom. It's quite nice. I'm looking for anything that I like, really. I'm looking for, you know, a nice look. That's a nice smile from Jess. So if that's what I want, I'm going to star that. I think I'm immediately throwing out any of the ones that are kind of unusable, where something might be off. Like here, the clothes don't look so flattering seated. In this angle, there they look pretty good. There, you know, she's half blinking. So we can immediately throw that out. I'm just looking for what whatever I respond to. I mean, I think with Jess, it's just about kind of-- especially here, I really like her kind of elegance. I think sometimes the clothes look a little awkward seated. So you can see in this region. So that's not a bad thing. I wouldn't rule that out, because she looks great. Maybe you can start to crop in or maybe something can be done. That's really nice, you know, very elegant. You know, I really like this one. Can mark that. And if I go through here, that's nice with her back turned. You know, I really like what we're seeing behind her with the repetiti...

About the Instructor

A revolutionary talent, Tyler Mitchell made history as the first Black photographer to shoot an American Vogue cover, work that is part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. Now he’s sharing his process with you. Discover how to create and compose striking portraits, work with natural light and shadow, and tell a compelling story through your photos—even if the only equipment you have is your phone.

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Tyler Mitchell

History-making photographer Tyler Mitchell teaches you his artistic process for creating compelling images with any kind of camera.

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