Photo editing before and after: what to look for

Editing tutorials are useful, but you're watching somebody fix their own file. What you really want to know is what your file needs.

13 August 20269 minute read

Massive edit to conjure some deadly atmosphere, accentuate angles and highlight 2 very scary machines. That B-2 is pure Darth Vader sinisterness!

A before and after gets you much closer to that than a tutorial does. Put the raw file next to the finished shot and you can see every decision without anyone talking you through it. Every difference between the two is something the photographer chose to do.

What should you compare in a photo editing before and after?

There are five things worth comparing, and it's best to look in this order. The first two explain most of what happened and the last one explains very little:

Global tone. Did the whole shot get lighter, darker or more contrasty?
Local adjustments. Which specific areas were treated differently?
Colour. Warmer, cooler, more muted, more selective?
Crop. What disappeared from the edges?
Sharpening and noise. Useful, but usually not the main reason the edit works.

Rather than asking which slider they used, ask why they decided the shot needed it. The answer to that carries over to your own files, whereas their slider positions won't.

What to look for

What became the subject?

Almost every edit pushes your attention somewhere. One area gets brighter, another gets quieter, a distraction goes into shadow, or a crop shifts the balance of the whole thing. Follow where your attention ends up and you'll see what the photographer decided the shot was about, and it isn't always the thing they pointed the camera at.

How much changed?

Usually less than you'd expect. A shot that looks heavily worked often turns out to be a crop, a small change in tone and one local adjustment. It's easy to assume a shot you love had loads done to it, and some did! Having the start and the finish in front of you stops you guessing which.

The rear of a MiG-29 in a low key edit, the jet lit against a completely black background. — A MiG-29 at a museum in Krakow, parked on grass in daylight, turned into what the photographer calls a low key edit. Drag the Edit Reveal and the whole background has gone to black, so this is one of the ones that did have a lot done to it.

What didn't change?

This is the hardest one to spot, as nothing draws attention to the part of a shot that stayed the same. If an area was left alone, that's a decision too. Leaving a shadow dark, or a sky exactly as it came out of the camera, takes some restraint when every instinct says keep going.

How much was already there?

Some files need finishing and some need rescuing. A file that was nearly right in camera takes ten minutes and still looks like a photograph at the end of it. A file that was badly wrong takes an hour and often still looks like an hour's work. Learning to tell them apart tells you when to stop editing and go and take it again.

A twin-engine light aircraft parked on a wet apron, with low mist over the pine trees behind and a pink sky above. — Ido Sarne calls this one of his best recoveries ever, and the Edit Reveal shows why: the file came out of the camera dark and grey, and the colour in the sky and the grass came back in Lightroom Classic. Drag between the two and see how much the edit brought back, and how much was there all along.

A useful order for comparing two versions

The usual mistake with a before and after is jumping straight to sharpening and colour grading, and missing the changes that made the real difference. The big moves are the boring ones, so work through it in this order instead.

1. Global tone

Is the whole shot brighter or darker than it was, and has the contrast changed? This comes first because it changes everything after it. A file lifted half a stop makes every local adjustment that follows look different.

A Boeing Stearman biplane numbered 808 flying low over trees against a blue sky. — A Boeing Stearman that the photographer says was completely blown out by the sunlight, then saved from the RAW file in Lightroom. Drag the Edit Reveal to see how far it came back. It's a good reason to shoot RAW, as a JPEG gives you far less to pull back.

2. Local adjustments

Which parts were treated differently from the rest? A face lifted, a sky held back, a foreground opened up. This is where most of the judgement in an edit is, and it's the part a preset can't do for you, as a preset doesn't know which bit of your shot matters.

3. Colour

Did the overall temperature change, and were individual colours adjusted? It helps to separate the two. A warm shift across the whole shot is usually about mood, whereas a targeted change to one colour is usually about a distraction.

4. Crop

Check the edges. A small crop removes a surprising amount of clutter and gets almost no credit for it, since nobody can see what's missing. If a finished shot feels tidier than the original and you can't work out why, the crop is where to look.

A CF-18 Hornet taking off with its gear down, above a dark treeline and an orange windsock. — A CF-18 on take-off. The photographer says it was a tight crop to get rid of distractions, with the background blurred and darkened, but the windsock was kept in as it added relevance. Drag the Edit Reveal and see how much of the airfield went.

5. Detail

Sharpening, noise reduction and texture come last. They matter, but they very rarely explain why an edit works. If somebody's shot looks better than yours, it probably isn't down to a better sharpening amount.

Ask why before how

"How did they do that?" leads you to tools, whereas "why did they do that?" leads you to judgement, and judgement is what you can take back to your own shots. If somebody darkened a corner, the useful bit to learn is that they noticed a bright corner pulling attention away from the subject and did something about it. Which mask they used in Lightroom matters a lot less.

The question to ask

Instead of asking how they did it, ask why they decided to do it. The how is usually a settings question. The why is what helps with your own shots.

Do the same with your own old work

Pick a folder from a couple of years ago and put the finished edits next to the raw files. The patterns show up quicker than you'd like: everything a bit too warm, Clarity applied with real enthusiasm, or every sky darkened harder than the land underneath it. Those habits are almost impossible to spot one shot at a time, so they can hang around for years. Going through an old folder like this is closer to deliberate practice than another day out with the camera.

Three things before-and-after catches quickly

Global clarity or texture

Easy to apply, easy to overdo, and you won't notice you've overdone it while you're doing it. Side by side with the original, the gritty version stands out immediately. If in doubt, take it back to about half of what looked right at the time.

Crushed blacks

A dark edit can look great on your screen and turn into a black hole on somebody else's, and you won't find out until someone tells you. Compare the shadows with the original and check you meant to throw that detail away. Losing it on purpose is fine, but losing it without noticing isn't.

A sky that no longer belongs to the land

Darkening a sky hard without matching the light below it splits the shot into two halves that clearly weren't taken at the same moment. Nothing has technically gone wrong in the file, but it stops looking believable. Once you've spotted it in somebody else's shot, you'll start seeing it in your own.

Sun rays breaking through a gap in heavy cloud over a line of dark trees. — Sun rays through a hole in the clouds. Drag the Edit Reveal and the sky has gone a lot darker, but the trees went down with it, so the two halves still look like the same moment. That's the version of a dark sky that holds up.

Why Edit Reveal exists on Kōlab

Edit Reveal puts the starting shot behind the finished one so you can drag between the two. You see what changed in about a second, which is quicker than anyone can describe an edit and a lot more accurate. Versions take the same idea further. If somebody comes back later and reworks the same shot, the newer edit stays attached to the original instead of becoming a separate post, nothing is ranked, and no version replaces the one before it.

Two United airliners side by side on parallel runways at San Francisco, one in Star Alliance colours, with water in the foreground. — Added as edit one, with the unedited file attached and a question underneath asking which version suits the raw better. A question like that gives anyone who comments something specific to answer.

Seeing that somebody made a strong shot doesn't teach you much, but seeing which decisions got them there does. It's also a good reason to say what you were going for when you put an edit up, as a comment on a photograph is only worth reading when the person writing it knows what you were after.

Somewhere to try it

Pick an old raw file and edit it again from scratch, without looking at what you did the first time. Then put all three side by side (raw, old edit, new edit) and be honest about which one you prefer, even if the answer is a bit humbling. It'll tell you more about your own taste than any tutorial. The 7-Day Edit Challenge is that exercise with other people in it. Put up your edit with the file you started from, and say what you decided to change rather than which preset you used.

Shoot itAviation

The 7-Day Edit Challenge

Bring an old file and a new idea. The interesting part is what you decided to change.

If all this leaves you wondering how far editing should go, is editing photos cheating takes that argument on properly. It's one of the oldest arguments in photography (and still a reliable way to start a row at a camera club).