What editing is for

Every digital photograph is processed. The only question is whether the camera does it or you do.

A jpeg straight out of a camera has already had white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpening applied according to somebody’s idea of what looks good. Editing a raw file is not adding interpretation — it is choosing it.

What it does well

• Exposure, within about a stop either way.
• white balance, completely and without penalty on a RAW file.
• contrast and the relationship between tones.
• Cropping and straightening.
• Local adjustments — brightening a face, darkening a distracting corner.

What it cannot do

• Recover clipping. Pure white has no detail to bring back. Pulling the highlight slider down turns it grey, which is worse.
• Undo blur. Nothing recovers camera shake or missed focus. Sharpening increases edge contrast; it does not add information.
• Fix composition. Cropping changes framing but not the relationships between things, which needed you to move at the time.
• Make a boring photograph interesting.

How much is too much

There is no correct amount, but there is a useful test: does the edit serve the photograph, or is it covering for it?

Heavy editing on a strong photograph is a style. Heavy editing on a weak one is usually an attempt to make it into something else, and it rarely succeeds.

Keep the original

Edit non-destructively — every serious tool does this by default, storing your changes as instructions rather than altering the file.

Keep the RAW files. Your taste will change, tools improve, and a photograph you gave up on in year one is sometimes recoverable in year three.

Key takeaways

• Every digital photograph is interpreted; editing means choosing the interpretation.
• It handles exposure, white balance, contrast and crop well.
• It cannot recover clipping, undo blur, or fix composition.
• Repeated corrections are a sign of something to change in the camera.