What Really Goes Into Editing Your Photos

When you book a professional photographer, you’re not just paying for the session—you’re investing in a polished, high-quality final product. Editing plays a massive role in bringing your images to life. Here’s what happens behind the scenes:

1. Color Correction & Exposure Adjustments

Your photos might look great straight out of the camera, but lighting and colors often need fine-tuning to match the right mood and tone. We enhance brightness, contrast, and warmth to ensure your photos pop.

2. Retouching & Flaw Removal

We take care of small distractions—blemishes, flyaway hairs, or an unwanted photobomber—while keeping your natural beauty intact. The goal isn’t to change you, but to make sure your best features shine.

3. Artistic Enhancements & Storytelling

Editing allows us to create a signature style, adding depth, richness, or even a dreamy feel to your images. Whether it's softening backgrounds, enhancing details, or creating black-and-white masterpieces, we tailor each edit to tell your unique story.

Let’s take a look!

This is an example of a photo from a most recent wedding. What is wrong with this photo? First, there are a lot of people in the background that is distracting. Second, the grass was just aerated which left all those brown plugs everywhere. Third, the sky was really great this day but the photo does not do it justice and finally the couple doesn’t really pop off the image. Let’s fix all these issues and see what we come up with.

This now becomes so much better! If you didn’t know any better you would never know that all those distractions were there.

Let’s look at another example.

For this image we knew we wanted to do a silhouette. We placed the couple in the brightest part of the sky at this time, we exposed for the most effect we could. But obviously this photo overall is not that great. One, in order to have a great silhouette there needs to be a big difference between the bright spots and the dark spots. We don’t really have that here. Everything is pretty flat. Second, there is a lot of distractions in this image, especially if you look to the left of the couple with the tree and the light poles. Let’s fix this!

So much better!

Ok, let’s look at one more example.

This is a pretty good photo overall. It highlights the couple nicely, it showcases the venue that they got married at and this is a personal touch but this was an old police station and they are both in law enforcement. Now, what is wrong with this. There are a few distractions in the image, the couple doesn’t really pop and I don’t know if you notice this but the lines on the building are not straight. This happens because we photographed with a wide angle lens and it distorts lines. Alright, lets clean this image up.

The lines are straight now, the little white sign behind their head is cleaned up, the building has been marked so they pop a little more.

As you can see, there is a lot that goes into each and every image we deliver. We don’t just apply some preset we found online and then deliver the photos. We truly work each image to deliver the best story possible. When you are paying us, you are not just paying for the time we are there photographing. You are paying for our retouching and ensuring that your photos come out perfect!

Ready for beautifully edited photos? Book your session with Lepik Photography today!