You probably notice the difference between the photos you take and professional photos. How much better and vibrant their colors are, the contrast between the shadows and highlights. Well there are ways of improving your photos without need a professional camera.
One of the first thing you notice in most professional photos are the darkness of the shadows (the dark areas) and the hightlights (the light areas). In most photo editing software, there is an adjustment you can find that is called
Levels. In the Levels panel, it gives you three sliders to adjust. The shadows, the highlights, and the midtones. Increasing the shadows and highlights will really bring out the details in your photos and make them really pop.
As you can see in the image below. The picture on the left is the original photo. The image on the right is the same images but with a simple adjustment of the
Levels. Increasing the shadows and highlights. Giving your photo a better look.
The next thing is
vibrance and
saturation. They are basically the same thing but depending on what kind of photo you are editing will affect your choice. What both of these adjustments do is increase the amount of color in your photos.
The photo below shows the use of the
vibrance adjustment. The left image is the original and the right one has enhanced colors. It really looks more true to life.
Those are two very simple things to look for in your photo editing program. If you don't have a Levels setting, you can also look at the brightness and contrast. Playing around with those can give you similar results.
