Editing Steps

Lens-Artists Challenge #154

How I edit a photograph

This week Ritva invites us “to explore the different methods you use to create images“.

I have chosen to show you my way of editing one specific photo. The exact steps will vary from one photo to another, but mostly my approach is pretty much the same.

I load the photo into PaintShop Pro and inspect it to determine what I need to do to bring out the image the way I want tp present it.

Here is the unedited version of a a studio shot of model Sadé.

There are a number of disturbing and distracting things about this photo. The first is the background. I make a rough selection of the background and use the blur tool to tone it down.

The model is too centered in the frame for my taste, so I crop out some of the left and bottom, keeping the same 3×4 aspect ratio.

The background is still rather bland and I decide to apply a vignette.

Some fine-tuning of exposure and contrast is my next step.

The cropping also cut out some bothersome details of the costume – but there is that yellow patch on the right that really distracts. I take the liberty to clone it out.

The image is now to my liking.

I always ask myself “can I do more to make this more interesting, more imaginative, more captivating?”. So, I play a little.

How about a black-and-white conversion. I try various color filter version and select a light yellow-red filtration.

The background still seems too distracting to me. I pop the image into ON1 and use the one click background remover tool on the original. That is two stark – I would need to do some exploring with replacing the background altogether – I decide to pass on that.

Next – how about a stark simplification of the image. I use an old Topaz Labs tool for that to create a “cafe art” version.

I think I have done enough with this photo. I like the version that I use as my featured photo above.

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Tina, Patti, Ann-Christine, John, Sofia, Anne, Egidio,  Beth, Ritva, 

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.:. © 2026 Ludwig Keck