What is a “Clean Edit” in Photography?

3 Ways to Edit a Photo

When editing photographs, most photo editors or photographers stick to 3 main types of editing: “light and airy”, “dark and moody” and “clean editing.” Of course, there is a spectrum there and every photographer has a personal style.

Dark and Moody/Light and Airy

Both dark and moody and light and airy edits use light or lack there of to convey a certain mood. A photographer or photo editor can tweak the photo at the editing stage to get the mood that is desired by manipulating the exposure, white balance as well as the highlights, contrast and shadows. Of course the photographers themselves can also affect the mood of the photo when actually taking the photo, too. (Hint to budding photographers, this can be a great reason to photograph in RAW as opposed to JPG. When you photograph in RAW, all the data coming into the lens gets saved so that you can manipulate it later in the editing stage.)

Clean Editing

At Cassels & Co. Photography, we stick to “Clean Editing.” Here is why: Clean Editing never goes out of style! There is definitely a time and place for artistic editing but for our goal of preserving precious moments of your family, friends and special events, we want to make sure that your photographs will always look timeless. A “Clean Edit” stands the test of time! (Hint: if you are using a wedding photographer this year, make sure you ask what type of editing they use! You don’t want to be caught off guard with some super airy photos when you were hoping to have more of a clean, true to life printed memories!)