16 Post-Processing Techniques That Will Dramatically Elevate Your Photography

Selective color grading through luminosity masks—and most beginners have no idea this even exists.

Here’s what changed everything for me:

Early in my career, I was drowning in global adjustments. Cranking up contrast, pushing saturation sliders, applying blanket color corrections. My images looked processed, artificial, heavy-handed. I was editing like I was painting with a roller when I needed a fine brush.

The breakthrough came when I learned to isolate tonal ranges independently.

Luminosity masks let you target specific brightness values—highlights, midtones, shadows—and apply completely different color treatments to each. This is how professional images achieve that polished, dimensional look that feels natural rather than filtered.

Practical example:

Portrait with window light. Without luminosity masking, you’d globally adjust and either blow out the highlights or crush the shadows. With proper masking, I can:

Warm the skin tone midtones without affecting the cool window light.

Add contrast to shadows without destroying highlight detail.

Selectively desaturate bright areas to prevent color clipping.

Create depth that mimics how our eyes actually perceive light falloff.

Why beginners miss this:

They’re chasing preset packs and one-click solutions. Real post-processing mastery is surgical, not systematic. Those Instagram filters everyone downloads? They’re global adjustments that work on 10% of images and butcher the other 90%.

How this transformed my work:

My images went from “obviously edited” to “I can’t tell what you did, but this looks amazing.” That’s the goal—invisible technique that produces visible quality.

Client retention improved dramatically because my style became consistent regardless of shooting conditions. Problem lighting situations became creative opportunities instead of technical nightmares.

The learning curve is real, but once you understand tonal separation, you’ll never edit the same way again.

Stop editing everything. Start editing strategically.

Photo composite is often overlooked by beginners. It’s the process of combining two or more images to produce one convincing final image using tools like layers in photoshop. This process has been around long before photoshop. The term used then was “Combination printing”—same process by layering two or more negatives while printing to create one final complex image. When done properly, this delivers results which will elevate your photography.

When I learned this in photo school, it gave me control of everything in my work. I work with drinks, and beverage for commercials and having control over the way the label, the liquid, garnish, the glass looks helps a lot in delivering the proper results for my clients. There are times when you light the label of a bottle and it makes the liquid look odd, and vice versa. To work around this, everything is shot in different plates and brought together to make one final image – Photo composite. This is not only for Drinks or product photography but is common in almost every genre of commercial photography.

One small technique I’ve found incredibly useful for newborn photography is red skin tone removal. Newborn babies tend to be very red, and during post-processing, it’s important to soften those tones and bring their skin closer to the natural color it should have.

When I was a beginner, I thought correcting skin tones, especially on the face, was very difficult. I felt like I couldn’t fully control my brush or properly adjust the red curves. But over time, I realized it doesn’t have to be complicated.

What I do now is let Photoshop help me identify the problem areas first. By temporarily increasing the red saturation, the overly red areas become very obvious. Once I can clearly see where the redness is, I simply select those areas and lower the red saturation to a natural level.

It’s really that simple. I can clean up red skin tones in under a minute, and the newborn portraits immediately look much cleaner with smooth, even skin color.

The biggest post-processing shift for me was learning how editing tools actually affect an image, rather than relying on presets or guesswork.

The advice I always give is to shoot in RAW and edit in Lightroom. RAW files contain far more data than JPEGs, which gives you real flexibility when editing. You can rescue images in RAW that would be unusable as JPEGs.

When you’re starting out, I tell people to push every slider to the extreme, then pull it back to where it looks right and feels right to them. Do this repeatedly. It trains your eye and teaches you how contrast, colour, texture and tone actually affect an image. That process is how you develop a consistent editing style instead of guessing.

Learning this completely changed my work. I stopped “editing” and started making deliberate decisions – my images became cleaner, more consistent, and more natural looking.

Bonus advice – be careful with the clarity slider. Most beginners hammer clarity because it feels like instant impact, but it often makes images gritty and unnatural, especially with people. If there are faces in the frame, a touch of -5 to -10 clarity usually gives far more flattering, natural skin tones.

Finally, always export in sRGB. Most images are viewed on phones and social platforms like Instagram assume sRGB. Exporting wider colour spaces can cause dull or shifted colours, particularly on some Android devices.

One post-processing technique beginners often overlook is using presets as a foundation. Presets can speed things up, but relying on them without adjusting for skin tones and real-world color usually leads to images that feel heavy-handed.

Learning to prioritize natural skin tones completely changed how we edit. Once I focused on keeping skin true to life and resisting the urge to overdo contrast, clarity, or texture, our images felt calmer and more refined. Early on, it’s easy to push sliders too far and not realize how crunchy or harsh an image has become until much later.

Editing with restraint and intention, rather than trying to make every image pop, elevated my work far more than any preset ever could. The photos started to feel timeless instead of trendy, which is ultimately what most photographers are aiming for.

One trick that really changed my photography is selective dodging and burning. It’s about lightening or darkening certain spots to draw attention where you want it. People starting out usually just tweak overall settings like contrast, but dodging and burning lets you bring out depth and texture, and set a mood without messing up the whole picture. When I learned this, it changed my flat, boring shots into lively, emotional images that really make the subject pop. It’s a small detail, but it makes landscapes feel more real and wildlife shots more exciting, so you feel like you’re actually there.

When we shot our first collection, I quickly realized the photos weren’t doing justice to the electric energy of our fabrics—especially the neons and mesh that define our look. The images came out flat, failing to capture the interplay of light, texture, and movement that our designs embody in real life. Everything changed when I began using selective dodging and burning in post-processing: instead of applying global adjustments, I started carefully brightening highlights and deepening shadows only in targeted areas. This technique coaxed out the true character of the materials—the shimmer of mesh, the pulse of neon—making the images burst with depth and authentic color. It’s a subtle but powerful edit that transforms photos from lifeless to luminous, yet it’s often missed by beginners eager to move quickly. Once I mastered this step, my work evolved from merely documenting clothes to visually animating them.

The technique that changed everything for me was learning proper color grading instead of just adjusting exposure and just throwing on a preset. When I first began to film weddings I used to edit each clip individually and never had a thought on how the colors worked together in the course of a whole film. That meant that my final edits were disjointed and inconsistent (even though each individual shot looked decent on its own).

Color grading helps to create a unified emotional tone for the entire wedding film. I’m talking making an intentional decision about skin tones, shadow colors and how warm or cool the overall palette feels. Most beginners tend to believe good editing means that you should make things brighter or sharper, but what really separates the professional work is that cohesive color story.

When I grade footage now, I create a look that corresponds to the couple’s aesthetic of the wedding, and apply it across the board. That’s what makes a film cinematic as opposed to just pretty.

One post-processing technique beginners often overlook is using Levels adjustment layers for color correction instead of relying on presets or saturation sliders. Learning Levels in photoshop taught me how to really read an image, where the shadows are too heavy, where highlights are breaking, and which color channel is quietly throwing the whole mood off. That understanding became especially important once I started printing my own fine art photographs and offering my work through art galleries. Levels helped me correct color by channel and tone at the foundation, so what I saw on screen translated more accurately to print. It changed my work from looking “good digitally” to feeling intentional, consistent, and trustworthy as physical artwork.

One technique beginners often miss is edge luminance shaping. Most edits focus on global contrast, but the eye reads brightness changes at edges first. Learning to control how light falls off around subject boundaries changed how intentional my images feel.

I started shaping luminance along edges rather than pushing clarity or sharpening. Subtle darkening behind a subject and gentle lift on the subject-facing edge creates separation without halos. This mirrors how light behaves in real scenes and avoids the brittle look of heavy microcontrast.

The biggest change showed up in depth. Subjects began to sit inside the frame instead of floating on top of it. Backgrounds felt quieter, and focal points became obvious without relying on vignettes or aggressive dodge and burn.

Edge luminance shaping also improved print results. Fine transitions held up better on paper than hard contrast moves. My edits now guide the eye through light, not texture or sharpness.

One technique I rarely see beginners use is perceptual white biasing. Cameras chase neutral white, but the human eye expects white to lean warm or cool depending on context. Learning this changed how natural my images feel, even when viewers can’t explain why.

I used to correct white balance until whites read perfectly neutral on a scope. The results looked clean but lifeless. Perceptual white biasing taught me to let whites drift slightly toward warmth in skin-heavy scenes and cooler in architectural or overcast settings. That small bias anchors the rest of the color palette.

This approach also improved color separation. When whites feel believable, surrounding colors stop competing for attention. Skin tones settle, shadows hold depth, and highlights avoid that sterile digital look. The image reads faster and with less visual tension.

My editing decisions became more intentional. Instead of asking whether white balance was accurate, I started asking whether it felt right for the scene. Perceptual white biasing gave me control over mood without heavy color grading.

Tonal normalization on a collection of images is a more significant difference than most anticipate. Most of the would-be photographers are single-shot editors; they respond to an image individually. The effect is a gallery with exposure, contrast, and color temperature changing marginally per frame. The audience might not be able to place a name on the problem but it is instantly perceived as visual dissonance.

The process is achieved by adjusting a tonal baseline. There is black point, white point, midtone contrast and white balance which is dialed in on a single reference image, and then the work is used throughout the entire shoot without making any creative adjustments. It is only then that individual tweaks occur. This method establishes unity and allows subject matter to shine through and not the edit.

The discovery of this altered the perception of work. Pictures began to be read like a literature instead of a set of instances. Client feedbacks became more focused on comments regarding the individual photos being commented on to comments regarding the overall polish and professionalism. The photographs were not made more dramatic. They were more deliberate, and this is the thing that tends to distinguish between amateur work and the work that can be trusted and repeated.

Local contrast enhancement–often called “clarity” in editing software–is one post-processing step that dramatically improved my photography. Beginners tend to chase saturation or sharpness, but clarity targets midtone contrasts, bringing texture and depth without blowing out highlights or shadow detail. It works especially well in portraits and landscapes, where subtle separation between elements can transform a flat image into something layered and dimensional.

Learning how to apply this selectively–not globally–was a turning point. Once I started masking clarity adjustments to specific areas, like skin versus clothing or background, the final images felt more refined and intentional. It’s a small tweak, but it taught me how much control post-processing gives you over visual storytelling–if you use it with restraint.

One technique that elevated my photography is local contrast control. I used to sharpen entire images and they looked harsh. I began adjusting clarity only on key zones to guide focus. When I applied this to PuroClean job photos, click rates rose 19 percent in one quarter. The images felt clean and honest. Many beginners miss subtle depth work. That small shift changed my results and improved our brand visibility.

One thing that leveled up our product photos at The Monterey Company was fixing white balance with a neutral reference and keeping it consistent across the whole set. Once I did that, our hats and patches stopped looking like they changed color from photo to photo, and everything felt cleaner and more trustworthy on the site.

What beginners in photography often overlook in regards to post-processing is learning to nail the exposure in camera, and not relying on Photoshop or Lightroom to fix their photos.

And in the same breath, beginners often fawn over how photos look from more experienced photographers and want their photos to have the same look and feel, so they spend their money buying actions or presets to mimic a certain look and feel. What they fail to realize is that not every photo is made for that action or preset.

The people selling these actions or presets purposely underexpose the photo, as well as lower saturation and contrast in post production, to show that their action or preset can transform their “boring” photos into this amazing looking one. They’re selling a fantasy to these beginners when the beginners should be learning how to properly expose in camera, as well as learning how to properly use their post-production tools without the help of actions or presets.

Instead of copying the styles and aesthetics of more established photographers, beginners should be focusing on finding and developing their own style of editing photos. They waste too much trying to be like everyone else when they should be finding out who they are if that makes sense.