Name: How I Edit My Photos!
Uploaded: 2026-02-07T04:18:21.000Z
Duration: 11 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I asked you guys in one of my previous videos whether you'd like to see how I edit my photos.

I'm going to walk you through sort of how I think about editing my photos with intention.

Now, I'm not going to be using any presets in this video.

Some of you guys are probably like, thank God he's not trying to sell something to us.

While I do sometimes use presets when I'm trying to save time or just trying to go for a certain look, these photos that I'm showing, showing you guys today, personally, I just didn't really feel like they needed a preset.

So this first photo that I'm going to edit, this is a picture of some snow.

And the night before we were camping out, there were gusts of up to like 40 miles an hour, which created this really cool wind, whipped texture on the snow.

And so I really want that to be the focus of this photo.

So that's why I'm going to throw it into black and white, just so we can focus on the texture.

And it's really not that much color in the photo anyway.

Now, when I look at this photo and I take a look at the histogram, I can see that a lot of information is sort of in the middle, right?

And generally with the histogram, you want it to be more spread out.

Like you want some information in the shadows and you want some information in the highlights.

So you can see, if I just slide the contrast slider, it will expand the histogram.

then we're going to drop the black values and increase our white values.

And already the photo has transformed significantly.

And you can definitely see it in the histogram that it has expanded.

And if we just go back to the beginning, you can see how skinny that histogram looks versus Now.

I know this may seem kind of technical for a lot of people, but

this is sort of what I look at when I edit, and

I think it helps you understand the photo.

Now, I'm also going to increase the texture here.

And with these kinds of sliders, I like to just slide it up until I feel like it's too much and then back it off a bit.

The next thing I'm going to do is go down to the tone curve here and use this point selector and select some of these ridges and shapes here to really accentuate them.

So I'm going to pick a bright spot, for example, this spot right here.

And I'm also going to pick a dark spot, maybe here.

And by holding shift, I'm going to drag down on these points and watch how this photo transforms.

I think I'm going to leave the top one there because the bright spots are already pretty bright.

I think this one really came from a gray blob to something that really pops.

And I would love to make a print out of this photo.

If you guys are actually interested in prints, I could potentially look into selling prints.

Also, all of these photos are going to be posted onto my photography Instagram, which I'll put on the screen right now.

This is separate from my typical tech Instagram, so this is where I'll be posting a lot of my freelance work and just my everyday photography.

All right, let's move on to the next photo.

So this next one already looks really good, and

that's kudos to the Leica Q2 with its 28 millimeter f 1.7.

Now, if you guys have been to In N Out, let me know your go to order.

Mine is a 3x3 animal style with no pickles and extra grilled onions.

Okay, so just making some basic adjustments here.

And honestly, that already looks really good.

I'm also going to increase the luminance of the buns just to make them stand out a bit more.

And maybe shift the hue of these buns towards the warmer side.

You can go from hot Cheetos to moldy disgusting burger, but

And then this is sort of what I like to do in a lot of photos is I like to add some cyan in the highlights.

And what you'll find with this photo is that it fits exceptionally well because there are a lot of warm tones in this image.

All of these colors right here in this tray and this red jacket are all warm.

And when you contrast that with introducing some cyan in the highlights really brings out some nice color contrast, which is something that you don't always get in photography.

So, yeah, just really accentuating that by inserting some cyan in the highlights.

If we turn that off and on, you'll see it makes a big difference and sort of sets the mood for this photo.

So, yeah, I'm quite happy with this photo.

Let's move on to our third photo, which is a portrait of me in the snow.

Now, I'm going to crop this photo to make sure that I'm centered a bit more like so.

And then with this photo, I really want to make a graduated ND sort of look in the sky by putting like a linear gradient.

So we're just going to do that and we're going to drop the exposure here.

That creates some nice visual interest towards the middle of the frame, I think.

Now, Lightroom has also implemented some really cool AI tools.

So under masks, you can actually select subjects.

And you'll see it'll select me perfectly, which is crazy.

And I can also select the sky with the click of a button.

So there's a lot of new tools that I actually didn't know about.

But, yeah, you guys can definitely go experiment with Lightroom if you have it.

Now, with selecting me, I'm going to raise the shadow to get some detail back into my jacket and my clothes.

Also just going to raise the shadows overall, maybe increase the vibrance a bit.

And then I've also made a radial gradient.

We get this tiny, tiny vignette towards me, like, barely noticeable.

Using the same trick with the curves, I'm going to raise some of these highlights and drop some of these shadows, hopefully create some nice contrast here.

And then with the hue of the blue, I don't like to do this too much.

Like, I know a lot of people will do something like this, go for that teal and orange look, but

I'm going to keep it more subtle than that.

I think we're just going to go a few points, maybe like four points that way.

And then we're also going to increase this effect with the color grading.

Going to add some teal into the highlights once again.

And I think the teal look really helps it feel much colder.

You know, in this photo, which it was cold, I had, like five layers.

I believe I had my base layer, a fleece layer, my bib, like snowboard bib.