10 Photo Editing Tips to Make Your Student Portfolio Better

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Sep 17

Creating a student portfolio is essential – you never know when you need to showcase your work, whether for an internship or a job application. Even when all other elements of your portfolio are flawless, your photos can make or break the impression you want to leave.

While it is important to work with great images, even the best pictures can benefit from a little editing. You don’t have to be a professional editor to make your pictures shine – with a few tips, you can take your portfolio pics to the next level. Here are 10 photo editing tips to help you get started!

1. Brightness and Contrast

There is no better way to improve the appearance of your photographs than by adjusting the brightness and contrast. In many cases, if you take pictures that are too dark or washed out, you can add depth by simply adjusting these two settings. Always be cautious not to overdo it, though.

2. Use Cropping to Focus Attention

Often, the ultimate crop lies within a wider scene. By cropping your photo, you can eliminate distraction and focus a viewer’s attention on the main subject. That might be an object, a part of a landscape, or a person.

3. Fix the White Balance

White balance is the overall color tone of your photo. Here’s why adjusting your photos’ white balance is important:

Corrects color temperature: Ensures the colors in your photo appear natural.
Removes unwanted color casts: Fixes overly blue, yellow, or green tones.
Enhances overall image quality: Makes the photo more visually appealing and professional.
Improves consistency: Keeps the color tones consistent across multiple photos.
Highlights true colors: Reflects the real-life colors of your subject accurately.

Most editing software has a simple slider for changing the white balance, and you can usually get the correct color temperature quite quickly.

4. Straighten Your Shots

If your photos have a tilted horizon or slanted lines, they can look a little amateurish. Straightening your shots ensures that everything is level, giving your pictures a cleaner look. The auto-straighten feature in most editing apps makes this quick and easy.

5. Play with Saturation and Vibrance

The saturation and the vibrance sliders control how bright or muted the colors in your photo are. If your photograph looks a little flat, upping the saturation can bring it to life, but avoid overdoing it; over-saturated photographs can look unrealistic.

6. Enhance Sharpness for Clearer Details

If your photo is only a smidgen out of sharp focus, sharpening will bring out the details and make the image look crisper. But have some restraint: over-sharpening can create hard edges that won’t enhance the look of your photo.

7. Use Filters, but Keep It Subtle

While filters can be a fun way to give your photos their own signature look, it’s easy to overdo it. If you do use a filter, stick to a mild one that complements the photo rather than overwhelming it. You don’t want your photos to look like a mess of effects in your portfolio.

8. Remove Blemishes and Unwanted Objects

Sometimes, there are little distractions in the background, or maybe there’s something off with your subject. You can use the spot healing or clone tool to remove any blemishes, dust, or other things that you don’t want in a photo. This makes your photos look more professional. If you want a professional touch beyond just your photos, check out UKWrtings. You can buy assignment from trusted service and get an expertly-written college paper in just a few hours. This will help you boost your grades and allow you to spend extra time perfecting your portfolio.

9. Experiment with Shadows and Highlights

Adding shadows and highlights will help you make your photos more dynamic. Play around with these settings to see how they can bring out details in the darkest parts of the image (shadows) and calm down any glaringly bright spots (highlights).

10. Consistency is Key

While each photo needs to be edited to look its best, keeping your portfolio consistent is key. Maintaining certain similarities makes the portfolio feel cohesive and organized. Keep the same filter, color tones, and edits the same to give your work a sense of unity.

Make Your Portfolio Stand Out

A quick, easy, and effective way to elevate your student portfolio is to edit your photography. It’s a fact that most of us don’t take perfect photos straight from the get-go. A few quick tweaks can ensure that your photos look polished and professional without appearing overly edited or fake. Try cropping your photographs and tweaking the brightness or sharpness, all of which are easy to do with basic software. Above all, keep it simple, subtle, and consistent – and your portfolio will look clean and professional.