How to Make Your Photos Come to Life

With a camera built into every smart device, everyone is a photographer. And with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, sharing your pictures is easier than ever. You can improve the quality of your pictures with a few simple tools. Here are some easy ways to make your photos really pop.

Learn How to Use Editing Tools

Editing your photos comes down to understanding a few basic elements of photography. Some of these are contrast, clarity, sharpening, perspective, and saturation. When you can tweak these elements on your photos, you will end up with a more professional finish. Some good beginner tools are PhotoScape, Snagit, FastStone Image Viewer, Paint.NET, and GIMP. These software options are more user-friendly than typical professional grade tools, and are affordable to free.

Print Your Photos

In the digital age, it is tempting to keep your photos inside your phone, but you can do so much more with printing. A professional photo lab can print photos on a variety of surfaces. Traditional surfaces include photo paper, masonite, canvas board, and foam board. However, traditional surfaces have made way for glass, burlap, metal, and even wood. Each of these surfaces create a subtle difference to the finished product. As you can imagine, glass photos are sharp and appear three dimensional. Burlap photos look more muted. Photos printed on metal are sharp and vibrant. And photos printed onto wood allow the grain of the wood to subtly show through.

Learn Basic Smartphone Photography Skills

Even if you own a high-quality camera, there is a good chance that you use your phone to take most of your pictures. Just because your phone camera is small, doesn’t mean it can’t take quality pictures. Start by familiarizing yourself with the camera. If it has a pro camera mode, you can change your settings. The main setting that will be useful here is to use raw format. Shooting raw allows you more control when it comes to editing your photo later with an editing tool. It is also important to account for lighting. Smartphones will produce better images during the golden hours of the day—sunrise and sunset. Get a straight horizon by lining it up with your phone’s grid lines. You can also play with your zoom function.  

Photography is an artform that everyone can try. As you improve your picture taking and editing skills, you will find that your photos get a lot more attention on posts. To display your photos, play with printing surfaces to get the effect you want. Utilize the tools that are at your fingertips and have fun with it!

For more tips on photography, check out this article here!