From RAW to Wow: A Practical Editing Workflow
By Alex Harper • 9 min read
A good editing workflow is a promise to your future self. It saves time, keeps style consistent, and makes delivery painless. The secret is not presets; it’s order. This guide offers a simple sequence you can repeat across portraits, travel, and events without drowning in sliders.
Begin before you edit. Copy your shoot to a dated folder with a clear name and back it up to a second drive. Inside your editor, create a collection and cull in passes: a fast pass for technical rejects, a second pass for story, and a final pass for client‑ready selects. Use flags or stars consistently. When you finish, you should have a tight set where every frame earns its place.
Color first, contrast second. Set white balance with a reference shot or a neutral area. If there’s no neutral, trust skin: keep reds tame and whites clean. Set exposure so the midtones feel true; then adjust the tone curve to add gentle contrast. Reserve clarity and texture for local adjustments; global clarity often roughens skin and sky more than you want.
Use HSL like seasoning. Rather than boosting saturation across the board, nudge oranges and yellows to guide skin and foliage. If greens are dull, shift hue slightly toward yellow and lift luminance. Blues can anchor skies and shadows; raise their luminance a touch to avoid banding in compressed output.
Local work happens next. Dodge and burn shape faces and scenes. Paint light on cheekbones and brows, deepen backgrounds, and add a soft vignette to contain attention. If you retouch skin, do it gently and at a low opacity; the goal is vitality, not plastic. Remove distractions near edges—bright pebbles, exit signs, stray hands—anything that steals the eye.
Lens corrections depend on taste. Enable distortion and vignetting fixes if the scene needs clean lines. For portraits, you may leave a hint of natural vignette for mood. Sharpen modestly and reduce noise only as required; too much noise reduction erases micro-contrast that gives images life.
Consistency wins deliveries. Sync only safe adjustments across a set: white balance, basic tone, HSL, and profile. Then refine the hero frames individually. Build three export presets: social (long edge 2048px, sRGB, 80% JPEG), portfolio (long edge 3000px), and print (full resolution, Adobe RGB or ProPhoto as needed, high quality). Name files with a prefix that keeps them in sequence.
Finally, step away. Viewing after a short break exposes heavy hands. If a frame still sings, it’s ready. If you feel tugged to over-correct, revisit the brief: what did the story require? An editing workflow is not about rules; it’s about rhythm. With rhythm, your RAWs become cohesive work, not just corrected pixels.