Whether you are a hobbyist or a professional, mastering every photo editing skill mentioned below helps you address the most common problems that photographers and their clients often face. By addressing those problems, you can achieve the biggest photo manipulation goals that many people expect or demand. If you are learning photo editing, be sure to focus on mastering the following skill before anything else.
Masking
Photo masking skill is often regarded as the most useful photo editing skill that every photographer or designer must learn. Masking allows you to isolate a part of a photo from the rest of it. This part can be anything from simple objects to complicated human body and hair. If you can master this skill, you can remove the background of a portrait or replace it, colorize people’s photos while leaving the background monochromatic, or manipulate a part of an image without affecting the rest of it. Masking is often better than simply selecting the desired part because of the former’s less destructive mechanism.
Retouching
Retouching skill is another useful skill that allows you to edit, correct, and restore photos in many unbelievable ways. If you use Adobe Photoshop, mastering this skill allows you to correct and alter photos by removing, adding, and correcting parts using tools like healing brush and patch tools. This skill is always in demand because many clients want you to restore old and damaged photos, to remove unwanted objects from their photos, or to alter their look on their photos to be more appealing.
Photo Adjustment
There are many elements of a photo that can be adjusted to achieve the desired look, such as brightness, exposure, and level. Photo editing applications generally offer a one-click or one-tap solution by using filters; however, professional photographers should be able to use their intuition and sensitivity to be able to precisely adjust these elements to evoke dramatic effects to the look of the edited photos.
