5 Signs You Have Over Edited a Photo


Photo editing is an integral part of photography. Most people edit photos to remove shadows from face images, enhance contrast and exposure, and make the features more vibrant. Some images require a little more vigilance in editing than others.

At the end of the day, creating an artistic photo by modifying adjustments to extremes is a personal choice. There are times when editing your photo can make it look over-processed. When you edit your photos, it is essential to know when you need to stop since too much editing will ruin your images instead of enhancing them.

Landscape and selfie images are the most common genres of photography that fall victim to overboard editing. When you spend a lot of time working on an image, it’s easy to overlook the signs that you have gone too far. Unfortunately, once you post or share the photo, your viewers will notice that it has been over-edited.

What Are the Signs That You Have Over Edited a Photo

1.   The Tones Look Unrealistic

Most times, there are photo elements that can make or break the sense of realism of photos, such as shadows and large areas of tonal highlights. For instance, if you were to take a picture of a scene with the sun in it, reducing too many highlights from the photo might make the area surrounding the sun appear unrealistic. However, blowing out areas in your photos is not always a bad thing, especially if it’s an image of the sun.

2.   Evident Oversaturation


Whether they are toned down or bright, colors play a significant role in any kind of photograph. However, having too much color in an image can be extremely distracting. Therefore, when making adjustments to your photos, pull the slider to -100 to eliminate all of the colors from the image, and slowly pull it to the right to increase saturation until it’s appropriately saturated.

3.   The Photo Appears Crunchy

 Using contrast filters to apply detail to photos can be very fun. So much so that most photographers tend to pile it onto photos until everything in the images is tack sharp. An occurrence of a halo edge around higher contrasted areas is an indicator that you have applied too much detail.

4.   Too Much Exposure


When attempting to expose a photograph properly, it is easy to end up overexposing it, and the exposure slider subsequently handles most of the abuse. Often yanking up on the exposure slider in an attempt to correctly expose the subject might leave other areas on your photograph too bright or blown out.

5.   Too Much Contrast


Adding too much contrast to a photo can leave your shadows looking unrealistic and very dark. Keep an eye on your black point unless you are going for an extremely moody look. You can adjust your black sliders and contrast, but it is very important to ensure that you do not add too much or unnecessary contrast.

To Sum It Up

 You will require a lot of practice to be able to manage the basics of any editing program. To make your images pop and create the perfect edits with a professional zeal, you have to do your homework. The most common editing mistakes occur when the user does not understand the editing program and instead tries to overuse the features, doesn’t use the helpful features available, or simply doesn’t know how to fix the simplest issues.

 To avoid common errors and mistakes, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the editing features of the program you are using to edit your photos.