The day my friend Steve and I went for a walk in the cornfield is one I’ll never forget. Mainly because we were almost killed by a crazy farmer/serial killer. Oh, that day.

We had went to Clarenville for a photo shoot and booster juice. On our way back home, there was this gorgeous, amazing cornfield. The kind that makes photographers of all kinds drool. You just don’t get cornfields like that in Central. So we stopped, obviously. Took pictures. Frolicked in the rolling fields and made love to our cameras. Until… a truck started coming towards us from way in the fields. Just driving straight towards us at 5 km/h. We had no idea if the person in the truck was going to tell us to leave, or just pull out a hacksaw and start ripping us to shreds. Too many scary movies and a cornfield at sunset instantly put me in mind of every scary movie I’ve ever seen… so we hopped in the jeep and left, with the crazy-truck man barely inches behind.

In the end we escaped, the guy in the truck waved, and I made fun of Steve for being a scaredy-pants the whole way home.

But on to editing!

I’ve had some requests for how I edit photos – and I’m going to say straight up that I’m not a crazy amazing editor, I usually keep things pretty natural. Anyone reading this who already knows how to edit photos is probably doing a facepalm, and for that I apologize. This is meant to be an extremely basic tutorial for anyone who is literally JUST learning how to use photoshop.

As a no-brainer, you can’t make a bad picture good in photoshop – you have to start off with a good, well-exposed photo, and enhance it. But if you want to know my secrets… the tools that I use are:

1) adobe lightroom and photoshop cs5. I use lightroom for batch-editing, such as weddings, so if you’re not shooting weddings or editing 1500 photos at a time… don’t even worry about it. Photoshop CS5 is pretty expensive for the average consumer, but photoshop elements is a much cheaper program (runs for around $100 I think) with many of the same controls. However… today, January 24th adobe actually has a sale running for $50 off a student and teacher version of photoshop. So if you are either of those, today is a great day to snatch a copy of photoshop!

2) paint the moon actions. Annie Manning, the creator, is an editing genius. This is where I get my ‘secret sauce’. Her actions run for around $30-$40 for a set; which is super cheap for what you’re getting. Actions are essentially a bundle of commands that you do to a photo (adding light, soft colors, warmth, contrast, etc) that, when you click the button, allows you to do it all at once instead of taking a couple of hours to do each command separately.

Let’s roll!

I start with this photo that Steve took of me in the cornfield (before the crazy farmer/serial killer showed up). I’m using a photo of myself because it’s easier to talk about myself… and anyone else would probably get offended if I talked about their pimples and off-color spots.

I then open the photo up in photoshop – and because I shot in RAW, I was able to edit a lot of things right from the start that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had shot in JPEG. Shooting RAW is a lot like it sounds… every bit of information is kept right in the file (sort of like how raw food keeps all it’s nutrients before it’s cooked), whereas JPEGs keep only what you have pre-chosen to keep. Shooting RAW is only helpful if you plan to be editing in lightroom or photoshop. You should be able to see a slight difference in this photo from the first – I pulled up the contrast a little bit, and added a little tiny bit of warmth.

As embarrassing/awkward as this is… I promised you the whole process. The first thing I do when I open a photo in photoshop is the basic edits. Kind of like when you put on makeup; you do the base before you move on. The first thing I do is get rid of the uglies – which means any pimples, blemishes, scars that I don’t want (I usually ask before removing them on other people, but I know I won’t mind), and little hairs. Before doing that though, I make a new layer – so that the original picture never actually gets touched. You can use the tool in the bottom, or an even easier way is to click and drag your base layer to that little ‘create a new layer’ tool. That will create a duplicate of your photo right on top – and keeps your original squeaky clean.

When I have my new layer, I use that little tool on the left called the ‘patch tool’ you just circle a bad spot, then drag it over a good spot to replace it. Easy-peesy. And makes you look better than you actually are. I don’t liquify or replace the skin or anything – remember you’re actually replacing the bad spots with your own skin, so it still looks natural, just clearer. (you’ll also notice that I took the second picture first – which is why there’s only one layer in the second picture. Forgive me).

All cleaned up – and as you can see, it looks much better.

After I’ve cleaned the skin, I remove any distractions that may be in the photo. In this particular photo, some corn stalks behind me make it look like I have antennas growing from my head.

I grab the clone stamp and essentially make a clone of the sky next to the ‘antennas’. I then brush it right over, going until it’s all covered. Don’t worry about making mistakes – as long as you’re doing it on a layer (and not the base photo), you can easily erase it.

Then I play my paint the moon action… for a little extra warmth and pop.

My final step is to add gradients to my photo. I love me some warmth, and adding a soft, warm gradient to the sky just makes it look even better. Steve (the one who was chased by a crazy farmer, and also took this picture…. scroll to the top… okay. Steve) taught me this trick, and I use it constantly now.

And there you have it!