Master Your Craft: Why you should re-edit older photos using new skills

 

 

Much like your photography skills improve with time and practice, so do your editing skills. Over time, you acquire new editing skills, software improves, and you develop new and different styles. What happens when a professional photographer like Pye Jirsa of SLR Lounge re-edits a photo he captured more than a decade ago?

When Jirsa started doing wedding photography in 2009, his editing style was very different. The image in question is HDR-esque with a lot of contrast and high saturation. I'm sure we all have images like this, especially from when we started photography or learned specific new techniques. The video shows why keeping your original raw files is so important. You never know how your style and taste will change over time. It's always good to have an original file that you can edit again rather than be stuck with a processed file that you no longer like.

Below, Jirsa tries to give the original photo a similar look, albeit with much greater precision and execution. He uses different tools in Adobe Lightroom, including sliders, the tone curve, HSL, color grading, masking, sharpening and more. If some of your favorite photos are starting to look a bit outdated, or even if your style has changed, take another swing at them in your photo editor of choice.

The video above is part of Jirsa's "Master Your Craft" video series for Adorama TV. We've previously featured "Master Your Craft" videos, including the following:

• An in-depth lighting study using only natural light in a garage 
• Step-by-step guide to posing couples 
• How to use Lightroom's AI masking technology to create stunning black and white portraits 
• How to create "flash" in natural-light portraits using Adobe Lightroom

(Via Adorama)