Why Your Photos Look Flat & How to Fix Them
Ever wondered why your photos don't look as good as the scene you were taking a picture of? 🤔🎒 What went wrong? What can you do? What’s the problem? The answer isn't a shiny new camera 📸, a big fancy lens, or an expensive trip somewhere hot and swanky. 🏖️
No, this problem could simply be fixed by a few simple editing adjustments that can make a huge difference to any photo. 🎁 These tips will make your photos look better, make your photos pop (💥), and hopefully give you what you were trying to capture and recreate. And they will make the best of what you have captured. ✨
Today, dear listener, we're diving deep into seven steps that will take your flat photos and make them look great. 👍 You will learn how to quickly get the most out of your images without spending a fortune on gear 💸, travel, or software, or by spending a ton of time on editing. 💻
These are simple but effective tips, 🔧 🛠️ simple adjustments to your workflow which will help you create better photos. 🛡️
Before I go any further, I need to say this. The aim is always to start with a great photo, the best you can get. If a photo is rubbish 🗑️, no amount of editing will turn it into a great photo. So this is not about making rubbish photos look great - if a photo is rubbish, delete it. 🚮
No, I am talking here about taking the best photo you can capture to the next level. ✨ These are easy enough adjustments to make that will give you massive returns in the quality of your work. 😊 And these tips are the things that any serious photographer does, in their own unique way, of course. 🖼️
I only edit to enhance what is already there. 😉 You might not agree with this, and this is fine, but this is all that I do.
This is a subject for much debate: how much editing is okay, or not okay? 🤷 Not a debate for now, maybe one for a future episode? ➡️
You can listen to this episode right here
Hello and welcome to episode 219 of the Photography Explained Podcast, "Why Your Photos Look Flat & How to Fix Them."🌟
A very good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to you, wherever you are in the world. 🌍 I'm your host, Rick, hi 👋, and in each episode, I try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) ⏱️, without the irrelevant details. Yes, really. 😉
I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England 🇬🇧 with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my splendid podcast. 🎙️ How utterly splendid. 🤩
Let’s get into this. 👇 Here are my seven editing tips that will make your photos pop! 🌟 🎯 These tips will simplify how you think about editing and help you achieve fantastic results without being a digital wizard. 🧙♂️🤫 I’m not, which will be no surprise to you, dear listeners!!
Tip 1: The Foundation: Crop, Straighten, Verticalize 🖼️✂️📐
This is where every edit should start. Even the best photos can often be quickly improved by a quick crop. ✂️ You’re not just making the image smaller; you’re refining the composition. Make the subject matter the star of the show by cropping in if you need to. ⭐️
Get rid of anything on the edges that distracts from your main subject.
Did you get a slightly crooked horizon? 📉 That's an easy fix! Use the straighten tool to get that horizon straight. Or that building level – very important. 🏛️
And once you have got things level, fix the verticals so everything is as it should be. This simple act of tidying up the frame and technical correction of horizontals and verticals can have a big impact, giving your photo a clean, professional, high-quality look and feel. Which is what we are after, isn’t it, dear listener? ✅
Tip 2: True Colors: Correcting White Balance ⚖️⚪🌡️
White balance is a fundamental starting point of every color photo. 🌈 White balance tells your camera what "white" should look like, which in turn corrects all the other colors in the image. Use auto white balance and you are expecting your camera to figure all of this for you. 🧠 Mixed lighting, or a scene with a massively dominant single color, can give you an incorrect white balance. ❌
Shoot in RAW and you can change this later though, which is nice. 💾
So, assuming you have used auto white balance and the colors do not look right, what do you do? Simple. Do this. 👇
Find a neutral grey or white object in your photo and use the eyedropper tool 💧 and click on that neutral thing. Boom. Suddenly, all your colors will hopefully look natural and true to life. It's a game-changer for portraits, food photography, and landscapes. OK, it’s a game-changer for any type of photography. For any photograph. 🏆
And even better, include that neutral grey in your photo. Get a grey card, put it in the photo, and you can use that to get your white balance pretty much nailed. Check out Episode 216: Essential Accessories for Every Photographer (Without Breaking the Bank) for more on this incredibly useful accessory, the grey card. I need to cover white balance in a separate episode – I will put that on the list for 2026. Blimey – 2026!! Didn’t see that coming ha ha!! 😅
Tip 3: The Next Step: Adjusting Exposure ☀️💡📷
Have you ever taken a photo and it looks a bit… dark and dull? 🌑 That's often a sign of flat exposure. Exposure is how bright or dark your photo is. If your photo is too bright, it's overexposed; if it’s too dark, it’s underexposed. Don't just rely on the main "exposure" slider, which simply makes a photo lighter or darker. Start there, of course, to get the overall brightness right, but know that this is just the beginning. It's the foundation upon which all other brightness adjustments will be built. For architectural photos, I make sure the dark corners aren’t too dark and that any bright windows aren't overexposed.
And then move on to the more specific adjustments, which on Lightroom are Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks. More on that in a minute. I forgot that! 🤦♂️
Tip 4: The Secret to Depth: Boosting Contrast 💥♟️⚫⚪
In photography, contrast is the visual difference between the brightest and darkest tones in an image. I boost the contrast of every photo that I take. I hadn’t actually thought about that until writing this. I never leave the contrast at zero. 🙅♂️
No, contrast is what gives a photo its punch. Without contrast, a photo looks flat and washed out. By boosting the contrast, you make your blacks blacker and your whites whiter, which adds to the depth and drama of a photo. 🎭 Don't go overboard, but a well-adjusted contrast slider can turn a flat, boring photo into a vibrant, compelling image. Look at the histogram 📊 as you do this; you want to make sure you're not clipping your whites or blacks, which means losing all detail in those areas. And I had never thought about that either with contrast until writing this episode, which I checked in Lightroom, and yes, you can clip the blacks and whites with the contrast slider. Clipping – that is a word for an episode on more stupid photography terms, I think. It’s added to my list. 📝 And more learning for me, which is good! 🤓
Talking of histograms, are you interested in learning more about the histogram? I’ve done a full episode on it! Check out episode 114, "What Is A Histogram And How Can It Help Us When We Shoot?" to learn how this simple chart can transform your photography. And also episode 164 which I completely forgot about – “Understanding Histograms In Photography”.
Tip 5: Adding Dimension: Highlights and Shadows – And More! 🌓☁️
When you've set your exposure and contrast, it's time to refine the image with the Highlights and Shadows sliders. By reducing highlights, you can bring back detail in bright areas like a cloudy sky 🌥️ or a white wedding dress. 👰 By lifting shadows, you can reveal hidden details in the darker parts of the image, like the texture in a dark suit or the leaves on a tree. 🌳 It's a fantastic way to add dimension to your images. For an architectural photo, this is about getting the detail back. I'll pull the highlights down to bring back the clouds in a bright sky, and lift the shadows to reveal the beautiful texture of the brick or stone. And if you use Lightroom or other similar photo editing software, this is all non-destructive editing, meaning that you can go back to the beginning at any time. ↩️
And you can also slide them the other way too – have a play and see what happens. 🕹️
And then, in Lightroom certainly, you also have further adjustments, setting the white point and black point, or moving these sliders too, which is what I tend to end up doing, and then if you fancy even further refinement, there is the Tone Curve, which I seldom use. That is a step too far for me. 🛑
Tip 6: The Power of Color: Saturation and Vibrance 🌈🎨
Now that you've got your light and dark tones sorted, it's time to think about color. A common mistake is to just boost the main "saturation" slider. ⚠️ Saturation is the intensity of color. If you push it too far, your photos can look unnatural and cartoonish. 🤡 A better tool is "vibrance." Vibrance selectively boosts the less saturated colors in your image, leaving the already-vibrant ones alone. This gives you a more natural-looking result, making colors pop without looking over-the-top. A small boost in vibrance can bring a photo to life, while a measured increase in saturation can make specific colors, like the red in a flower 🌺 or the blue of the sky 🟦, truly stand out.
Boost saturation, and you can make the skin look odd – vibrance does not do this. And there is again a further level of refinement in Lightroom, using the Color Mixer to boost the saturation and luminance of individual colors within an image. This is in the Color Mixer panel. So good, this deserves an episode all of its own. 🤩 And yes, I have added that to my list. 📝 This is where I might boost saturation of specific colours, not using the global saturation slider. But I love playing with the luminance slider, such a subtle but powerful refinement.
Tip 7: The Finishing Touches: Sharpening 🔍🤫🔪
Sharpening enhances the detail and texture in your photos, making them look crisp and clear. But if you use too much, you can also bring out noise, which looks like a grainy texture, especially in the dark areas of your photos. You can make a photo look artificial, and you can get artifacts. None of these are good things. 👎
So, you have to find a balance. ⚖️ Use a little bit of sharpening to make your photo pop. I sharpen every photo before I do something with it. Every photo.
Yes, dear listener, every photo needs some sharpening, unless the technology has advanced since I got my last camera. 📸📈
So, there you have it, seven essential tips you can use to sort your flat-looking photos. ✅
Final Thoughts & Takeaways 💡
The most important takeaways are these.
Crop and sort out verticals and horizontals to give yourself the best starting point. 📐
Sort the white balance so you get the colors right. ⚪
Sort the exposure. ☀️
Boost the contrast. 💥
Add more range to the tones. 🌓
Get the best out of the colors you have. 🌈
Sharpen to polish the finished look. 🔪
I do these seven things to every photo. And not much more.
And finally, editing photos is not cheating. 💯
Talking of which, check out episode 92, "Is Editing Photos Cheating? Well, Is It? Well, What Do You Think?" for more on this. 🤔
Here’s something for you to do, dear listener
Take a copy of an image you have already edited, reset all the adjustments, and do these seven things. I promise you'll see a massive difference. 🤯 The goal is a subtle edit that makes people say, "What a beautiful photo!" 🥰 not "Wow, what a great edit!" or “Hey, you must be amazing at Photoshop”. No offence, Adobe. 😉
Do this and let me know how you get on. 💬
What if I use a phone to take my photos? 📱
The cameras on modern phones are fantastic, but they often struggle in certain lighting conditions. Adjusting the exposure and contrast is a great way to improve your phone photos. There are dozens of free and powerful editing apps available for your phone. 📲 The principles are the same, whether you're using a phone or a big camera.💖
What do I do?
I compose so I don’t need to crop. I didn’t know I was doing this until it was pointed out to me. I still see if a crop will improve things, but I would say 95% of the time a crop is not required for my photos. Which is nice. 😌
And I shoot in RAW so all my photos look flat before I edit them. This is meant to be the case with RAW, though, much less so with JPEG.
I use a grey card. I include it in interior photos. When I'm shooting indoors, I need to get the colors right, and they vary from room to room. So I include the grey card in a photo, and then use the eyedropper tool to select the gray card and 99 times out of 100 that is white balance done. 🎯
And I do those seven things to every photo. Every photo.
One more thing 👇
A good edit should never be obvious. 🤫 The best post-processing is the kind you don't even notice. 👀
And another thing 👇
The best photo to edit is a well-shot photo. Editing can’t save a rubbish photo, so remember to still get your basics right in the camera and get the best composition that you can every time. 🧠 If you take a rubbish photo, editing will not make it a good photo. It will still be a rubbish photo. 💩
Some thoughts from the last episode
Well, this episode should have been the last episode. So what happened? Well, I tried getting ahead of myself and wrote four episodes with the plan of recording them all in one go, then editing them all and having December off. But this did not go well. 😭 I had all sorts of technical issues on the morning set aside for my mass recording session. 🎙️ Episode 218 was unusable, and I found myself away on business with only episode 219 to edit, but with 218 due out next. So I did a quick switcheroo and here we are. 🔄
Next Episode 🚀
Episode 220 is "The Photographer's Eye: See a Great Photo Before You Take It." 👁️ And yes, I will talk about a book that I bought years ago but still have with the very same title. By complete coincidence, I have to say. 📚
Get in Touch & Subscribe! 😅
If you have enjoyed this episode, and I hope you have, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future ones. 🔔 For anything else, check out my website, RickMcEvoyPhotography.com, 🌐 where you can find out how to ask a question, ❓ get a weekly email from me, 📧 get in touch, 👋 or find out more about my splendid podcast. 🎙️ And you can text me directly from the podcast feed. 💬 I have a YouTube channel too - type Rick McEvoy into YouTube and you'll find me. ▶️ Finally, check out my courses page, 🎓 where you will find my splendid "How to Become a Real Estate Photographer" course. 🏠
This episode was brought to you by a cheese and pickle sandwich 🥪 and a Coke Zero 🥤, which I consumed before settling into my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. 🎙️🏡
I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. 🙏 I reckon this episode will be about 23 minutes long after editing out the mistakes and bad stuff. ✂️
Thanks for listening 👋
Take care and stay safe. 🛡️ Cheers from me, Rick! 🍻