Make Photo Adjustments

In an ideal world, every photo I capture would be perfect in-camera, but that’s just not the case. (It’s a worthy goal to strive for, however—the less work you have to do to an image later, the better.) Most pictures can benefit from a little tinkering in a few areas. Here are the typical areas I focus on when I want to edit an image. Some of these won’t apply in all cases, or may not be needed at all, depending on the image.

• Recompose. I’m pulling a few concepts under this heading because they each change the boundary of a photo. Cropping is often done to exclude distracting elements at the edges of the frame or to “zoom in” on a subject, but it’s also often used to move a subject away from the center of the image for better visual interest.