Post-Processing

A Repeatable Lightroom Workflow You Can Use on Every Single Edit
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A Repeatable Lightroom Workflow You Can Use on Every Single Edit

For a long time, my editing sessions looked like this: open Lightroom, poke at the exposure slider, get distracted by the color grading panel, overcook the saturation, undo everything, stare at the histogram, and eventually export something I felt lukewarm about. I didn’t have a system. I had habits, and most of them were bad. What changed things for me was watching educators who treat editing as a deliberate, repeatable process rather than an improvised scramble across every panel Lightroom has to offer.

Stop Wrecking Your Photos in Post: Common Editing Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)
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Stop Wrecking Your Photos in Post: Common Editing Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

I still cringe at my edits from about four years ago. We’re talking blown-out highlights, skin tones that looked vaguely radioactive, and a clarity slider that had clearly never met a boundary it respected. The photos weren’t bad to begin with. The editing just buried them. If you’ve ever gone back through an old Lightroom catalog and quietly deleted things you were once proud of, you already know what I mean.

What Your RAW Files Actually Look Like (And Why That Should Excite You)
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What Your RAW Files Actually Look Like (And Why That Should Excite You)

Every photographer I know has had this experience: you see a stunning image online, you assume the photographer has some kind of magical eye or expensive gear you’ll never afford, and you quietly feel a little defeated. I spent years doing this before I started paying closer attention to what RAW files actually look like before editing. Turns out, even the pros are working from flat, underwhelming captures. The magic isn’t entirely in the moment the shutter fires.

How to Edit RAW Photos Without Getting Lost: A Beginner's Workflow That Actually Sticks
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How to Edit RAW Photos Without Getting Lost: A Beginner's Workflow That Actually Sticks

Every Sunday morning I take a photo walk around Seattle, and somewhere between the ferry terminal and my second coffee, I always end up talking to someone who’s just switched to shooting RAW. They’re excited, a little overwhelmed, and almost always ask the same question: “Where do I even start?” I used to fumble through an answer because, honestly, it took me a while to figure that out for myself. Opening a RAW file and staring down a panel full of sliders is genuinely disorienting when no one has ever explained the order in which things should happen.

Can You Spot What AI Changed? Using Photoshop Generative Fill to Rescue a Throwaway Shot
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Can You Spot What AI Changed? Using Photoshop Generative Fill to Rescue a Throwaway Shot

I have a folder on my hard drive called “almost.” It’s full of shots I couldn’t delete but couldn’t post either — photos where the light was right, the subject was interesting, and something annoying ruined the whole frame. A car bumper in the corner. A stranger mid-blink. A door frame cutting through the edge of a composition I actually loved. For years, those photos just sat there. Now, with Photoshop’s generative fill, some of them are finally usable.

From Flat to Striking: How to Replace Skies and Fix Lighting in Photoshop
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From Flat to Striking: How to Replace Skies and Fix Lighting in Photoshop

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from shooting in beautiful conditions and still ending up with a flat image. You were there. The mountains were massive. The light felt cinematic. And then you open the file and the sky is a washed-out grey blob that flattens the whole frame. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, usually on a Sunday morning walk when the foreground is perfect and the sky just isn’t cooperating.

Get Stunning Photo Edits in Minutes with Luminar Neo (No Experience Needed)
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Get Stunning Photo Edits in Minutes with Luminar Neo (No Experience Needed)

Every Sunday morning I take a photo walk around Seattle. No agenda, no client brief, just me and whatever lens I feel like throwing on. The problem? I come home with a card full of shots that are almost there. The light was flat, I was standing in the wrong spot, or a tangle of power lines decided to photobomb my otherwise perfect frame. For years, fixing those “almost” shots meant opening Photoshop and losing an hour I didn’t have.

Stop Reaching for the Contrast Slider: Editing Mistakes That Are Flattening Your Landscape Photos
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Stop Reaching for the Contrast Slider: Editing Mistakes That Are Flattening Your Landscape Photos

Every Sunday morning I take a photo walk around Seattle. No agenda, no client brief, just me and whatever light shows up. And for the first year of doing that, I’d come home with these gorgeous raw files that somehow looked flat and overworked by the time I was done editing them. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I knew my way around Lightroom well enough, but something in my process was quietly killing the images.

When Bad Weather Creates Rare Shots: What I Learned from Photographing a Flooded Ancient Forest
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When Bad Weather Creates Rare Shots: What I Learned from Photographing a Flooded Ancient Forest

I used to treat bad weather like a closed door. Rain meant staying home, overcast meant flat light, flooding meant stay away from the gear. It took me an embarrassingly long time to flip that around and start asking: what does this weather make possible that didn’t exist yesterday? That shift in mindset is exactly what this William Patino tutorial put into words better than I’ve managed to. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube

Why Your Portrait Lighting Looks Flat at Home (And How to Fix It in Post)
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Why Your Portrait Lighting Looks Flat at Home (And How to Fix It in Post)

You know that sinking feeling when you load a portrait onto your computer and the light that looked so gorgeous on location just… disappears? I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. You place your subject perfectly, the shadows are sculpting the face exactly right, you’re almost giddy pressing the shutter. Then you get home, open the raw file, and the whole thing looks like a flat, lifeless scan of a bad print.

5 Photo Editing Mistakes You're Probably Making Right Now (And How to Fix Them)
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5 Photo Editing Mistakes You're Probably Making Right Now (And How to Fix Them)

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from spending an hour editing a photo, exporting it, and then looking at it on your phone and thinking, “That looks nothing like what I saw on my screen.” I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. For a long time I assumed it was a skill gap, that I just needed more practice. Turns out, some of it wasn’t about skill at all.

How to Give Your Digital Footage That Super 8mm Home Video Soul
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How to Give Your Digital Footage That Super 8mm Home Video Soul

Every few months I get a message from someone asking how I made a particular video look “old.” Not degraded or broken, but warm and human, like something pulled from a shoebox of tapes your dad labeled with a Sharpie in 1987. I never had a clean answer until I sat down with this Peter McKinnon tutorial on faking the Super 8mm film look with digital cameras. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube