Since Photoshop is our primary tool for editing photos for the blog (and we get asked for tips and tricks a lot), here’s a straightforward guide to how we approach basic edits. First, a few important notes:
1. We’re not Photoshop experts: I learned some basics in a digital photography course back in college, and Sherry picked up some Photoshop skills in art classes. Most of our knowledge, though, is self-taught — lots of trial and error and clicking to see what each button does. We’ve developed a comfortable workflow that works for our photos, but we don’t claim to know every advanced technique.
2. We’re not professional photographers either: Aside from a couple of classes, our photography skills are mostly learned by doing. We’re not always happy with how a camera captures a scene compared to how our eyes perceive it, so we use Photoshop to make photos look more like real life. Many professional photographers also edit their images, so editing is a normal part of getting a photo ready for publishing.
3. Photoshop is not the only option: We use Photoshop because it’s comprehensive and familiar to us, but it’s not the only tool available. There are lighter, lower-cost, and free alternatives that can handle many basic edits. We personally use iPhoto for organizing and light adjustments like straightening and cropping, but other programs and free tools can also work depending on your needs.
Now for the core of this post: the basic editing adjustments we apply to most photos so they look closer to how we remember them in real life. These are not dramatic manipulations, just small tweaks that improve color, brightness, and clarity. I’ll use a shot of Clara and her dollhouse as an example.
The original shot isn’t terrible — our living room has decent natural light and we white-balanced the camera — but we still open it in Photoshop to make a few corrections.
The first step is resizing the image. The full-resolution photo is far larger than we need for the web, so we resize to web-friendly settings to keep page load times reasonable. We typically set images to 72 dpi for web use and choose a width appropriate for our layout (for example, 350 pixels for vertical images and 500 pixels for horizontal images). Always check “Constrain Proportions” so the image doesn’t stretch oddly.
Next we increase color saturation slightly to bring colors closer to how they appeared in person. Photos often look flatter than real life, so a small saturation boost helps. We usually apply a subtle increase (around +10) rather than anything extreme, which keeps colors natural.
We also increase contrast a little to prevent images from looking washed out after resizing or compression. A modest contrast adjustment (again, small increments) helps whites look clean and colors retain depth without over-darkening shadows or blowing out highlights.
Because we perform these same steps on most photos, we created a custom Photoshop Action that resizes and applies these adjustments with a single click. To create an action, open the Actions panel, click New Action, name it, start recording, perform the edits you want recorded, then stop recording. Later you can play the action to apply all recorded steps automatically.
For many photos, those steps are sufficient. If an image still needs more work, we might use Curves to adjust exposure, which brightens the image while preserving darker tones by gently lifting the midtones with a curved line. This keeps highlights intact while improving overall brightness more naturally than a simple Brightness adjustment.
We also sometimes make a subtle color balance adjustment to correct a photo’s temperature. If an image reads too warm or too cool, a tiny shift toward the opposite side (slightly more cyan or blue for a warm image, or a touch more yellow or red for a cool one) can make whites appear neutral and skin tones more accurate. These are small tweaks — just enough to make the photo feel like the real-life scene.
After editing, we save images in a compressed format for the web using a “Save for Web” function and export as optimized JPEGs. Compression reduces file size but can also reduce perceived contrast and color depth, which is why we make the earlier adjustments first.
Those simple steps form the backbone of our process for getting consistently good-looking photos. If you like a different aesthetic — warmer, more vintage, or higher contrast — tailor the settings to match. Experiment until the result feels right to you.
Beyond these basics, we occasionally use Photoshop for visualizing design decisions. For example, to mock up a new headboard, we select the area we want to change using selection tools like the Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Lasso, or Magic Wand, then experiment with color or patterns.
With a selection active, you can shift hue and saturation to test colors, or create a new layer and fill it with paint or a pattern. To apply a pattern only to the selected area, add a Layer Mask to the pattern layer while the selection is active; the mask will reveal the pattern only where the selection was. Unlinking the mask from the layer allows you to transform the pattern independently, and experimenting with layer blending modes (Multiply, Overlay, etc.) helps the new layer blend more naturally with the underlying image.
There’s much more you can do in Photoshop, but those are the everyday techniques we rely on to make our photos look closer to real life and to visualize design options quickly. If you have specific questions or want a follow-up on a particular technique, let us know and we’ll consider a deeper tutorial.