Revolutionise your workflow with smart photo editing solutions

Ask the layman what it’s called to digitally alter a photo, and the word Photoshop will likely be the term bandied about. That’s for good reason. After all, it’s the most well-known digital manipulation software out there. It’s packed with features, but that also makes it complicated to learn fully. 

Its stripped-back sister software, Adobe Lightroom, can do much of the heavy lifting that Photoshop can. Additionally, it adds smarter cataloguing features to help you find and rate your work. It’s cheaper and simpler too.

If you’re happy with the Adobe suite and can afford its monthly subscription fee, then you have lots of power at your disposal. But it’s far from the only way to make great edits. Plus, in many cases doesn’t go far enough for more specialist needs. 

There are loads of other hardware and software considerations that can make your life easier or your final results more polished. So let’s take a look at what you can do to make some seriously good changes.

Why exposure and white balance matter

It’s imperative to get your images as close as possible to what you want at the taking stage, rather than fixing it in Photoshop. That means the right exposure and white balance – even if you’re shooting Raw. 

When serious photographers all shot on slide film, you really had to get it right at the taking stage in terms of exposure and choosing the right film stock to match the light. You needed a decent light meter, and it was largely down to experience to select the right colour stock. Nowadays, you can simply check your exposure on the LCD screen. Nevertheless, it’s best to use the histogram, blinking highlights and to set a custom white balance. 

Or invest in a device like Datacolor’s Lightcolor Meter. This handy tool measures both intensity and colour temperature for any light source. That includes natural light, tungsten, LED and flash. Powered by a smartphone app, it means your colour and exposure will be correct every time. That helps significantly when it’s time to get the images onto the computer.

Stay clutter-free with AI-powered tools

If you’re like so many photographers, you’ll have thousands of images cluttering up external hard drives. Now, there’s a smarter way to search, sort and cull them. Excire Foto’s AI-powered photo organisation software scans images and generates precise, descriptive keywords for you. It recognises subjects, objects, colours, scenes and more. So there’s no need to remember folder or filenames. Simply type in what you’re looking for – such as ‘black motorcycle’ – and let the software find it instantly. 

Excire’s duplicate photo detection groups identical and similar images together too. This means you can easily compare and delete what you don’t need. Facial recognition and filtering lets you search for individuals or group shots based on age, expression or even emotion.

Consistency is key for colour accuracy

Now it’s time to actually look at the images and start working on them. For that, accurate colour is essential. Therefore, you need to carefully calibrate your monitor. Editing images on a display that has a colour cast, is too bright or too dark means the final output will look different from what you intended. 

Monitor, phone and printers all interpret colour differently. Over time, even the best monitors will drift out of whack as well, so calibration needs to become part of your regular routine.

You can buy dedicated colour devices from Datacolor and Calibrite, which can work on many kinds of monitor. Although not all screens offer complete adjustability. 

But a really sleek solution is to invest in one of Eizo’s latest Coloredge monitors. Fundamentally, these are built specifically for creative use rather than general-purpose computer monitor screens.

Eizo’s latest offer a wide colour range – including Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 for HDR – uniform brightness and superb reproduction. The CG Series comes with their own built-in sensor and Color Navigator software, allowing for automatic calibration without needing anything else. So you know you always have the right colours when starting your edit.

Use the power of AI tools

Truly mastering photo editing takes years of learning. However, there’s a way to not only speed up your editing, but refine it with more precision than you might have thought possible. 

Check out the latest AI-powered software, such as Zoner Studio, which opens up intelligent masking and fine adjustment tools to everyone, ideal for subtle retouching to dramatic scenes. 

Zoner’s new AI-powered masking engine can now automatically detect key areas, such as subjects, backgrounds and skies, then generate precise masks in a click. Simple menus then make it easy to alter these areas – such as boosting colour in a murky seascape, brightening faces in group shots or applying selective colour tweaks. Once a mask is created in one image, it can be applied across an entire set to make everything match.

Master portrait retouching

Perhaps the toughest post-production technique is skin and beauty retouching, where it’s so easy to get it all wrong. Take a look at the new Aftershoot AI Photo Retouching software, which helps photographers apply realistic, high-quality portrait retouching to images.

The tool is designed to simplify portrait retouching by handling tasks like skin texture correction, blemish removal, eyeglasses glare reduction and object removal.

Whether working on individual portraits or group shots, edits are applied with pixel-level precision while preserving natural skin texture and authentic looks. It’s designed to look natural, and can be fully controlled inside the easy-to-use software. 

Let smart software and hardware take the strain to help you attain perfect, finished images you can be proud of, without the massive learning curve.

Be the first to read this and other stories like it by signing up to our weekly newsletter