Top 5 Photo Editing Clich You Must Avoid

All photographers would tell you how important it is to post-process (or edit) your pictures and provide the last finishing touch. Of course, it takes a little practice to edit photographs properly and flawlessly. There is no one particular way in which you can post-process a photo – there are so many editing techniques which you can apply and each one will throw up a different result.

There are however, some editing techniques that have been used so many times, that the novelty has probably worn off now. These editing clichés – which were once in voqgue – are now best stayed away from. Here are five of those common editing clichés, which you can avoid from now on.

1. Square Polaroid format:
There was a time when the squared Polaroid formats offered by every photo editing software and app was all over the place. People would randomly encage photos into this cute little white frame without thinking what a square cropping would do to the composition of the image. Let’s not overdo this now.

2. Touching it up a tad bit too much:
Ever seen an edited portrait which looks nothing like the original? It’s one thing for advertising agencies to do that. It’s a whole lot different issue when you do that to pictures of people you know or things around you. It’s just that there must be so many people who would have met your mother or baby, and they would be the first ones to tell you that retouching blemishes or hair or skin colour (...or ... the list goes one) in their portrait has turned them into something fake. So keep retouching to the minimum.

3. Colour patches in black and white photos:
No doubt this technique of leaving an element of a black and white photo in colour works brilliantly in many cases. It does add that extra punch in an otherwise monochromatic photo. But it has unfortunately been used so much that it has entered the cliché category now.

4. Artificial depth of field:
Those who can’t achieve depth of field – in which only the main subject is in focus while everything else is slightly blurred depending on it’s distance from the subject – often resort to creating one while editing. They simply blur everything else in the background. One needs to remember that the appearance of blurred objects depends on many factors and it is not the same for every part of the photo.

5. Lens flares gone wrong:
That bright halo-like spot in a photo which occurs when light rays enter the lens directly are called flares. It happens only when the light source is in front of the camera. So if you have a photo in which the light source is clearly and visibly behind the camera, it is a wise idea to stay away from this clichéd editing technique.