Being an entrepreneur today calls for even more than just business management skills. You also need to become adept at storytelling, using narrative tools and photo edits to tell a compelling story about yourself and your business to grow a community that connects with your brand story. And a big part of telling this story is through photos and social media.
Finding a way to balance crafting high-quality digital content on top of your never-ending workflow can feel impossible – but we’re here to help you with that. These few basic tips should help you easily streamline your photo editing while landing on an image collection that tells your brand’s story with pride.
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Use AI Effectively
When it comes to images, getting a neat and aesthetic shot that looks effortless actually takes a lot of work. As an entrepreneur, leveraging the latest technology to your benefit can mean you get far more done with limited resources. This applies to editing images that tell your brand story, too. You can dramatically speed up the process of photo edits by utilizing advanced AI tools – and because it’s your original image, AI will simply help you elevate and edit, rather than add an artificial look.
Just remember that there’s a difference between relying on AI to create for you and using AI to finetune your own creations. For example, instead of trying to generate the perfect image, you can instead use AI tools to clean up any your own shots to give them that professional edge. For example, if you’ve got company shots with some messy desks in the background, you can simply use Photoshop to remove objects from your photos. This also allows you to be more careful when snapping photos around your workplace, especially while taking behind-the-scenes footage, which is all gold for telling an authentic, candid story of your brand.
Planning Is Half The Job Done
Speaking of workplace shots, while some photos are definitely going to be spontaneous, others should involve the work you do, which might mean you need to plan in advance. Before any professional branding photoshoot, make a small checklist of the things you need to make the shooting session a success. This would include good camera settings, the perfect lighting for the mood you want to set, props you may need and whether you’re going for a certain theme or backdrop, amongst other things.
Also, consider the atmosphere and mood you want to portray through the photo series. If your team will be in for a long shooting day, keep their energy levels up and their mood bright with snacks, music, and a well thought out schedule for the day that gives everyone ample time to rest and prepare amongst their photoshoot sessions.
Organise Your Photo Albums
This may seem like a basic task, but the moment you’re looking at 400 photographs that are almost identical, you realise you’ll have to sift through all of them to find that perfect shot your whole team approved of earlier. The solution? During or just after the shoot, get straight into organising your shoot album. You can develop a category or naming system, where you move each product into a category, have files for close-ups and for team photos in another.
You should also delete photos you know you won’t use straight away to help declutter and make the editing job far easier. You may even end up with duplicates while organizing your images, as things get copied rather than moved. There are mobile or desktop apps you can use to find and delete duplicate photos, to save you from going through all your images just to remove duplicates.
Photo Edits like a Pro
Despite the intimidating aspect of photography being an art, editing photos doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s really about a few simple tweaks that can make a big difference. In Photoshop or your image editing platform of choice, start by adjusting the brightness or exposure to get the overall lighting right, then play with contrast to make the photo look sharper or softer. Fixing highlights and shadows helps bring back details in really bright or dark areas, while adjusting the whites and blacks makes the picture feel more balanced.
For color, you can boost saturation or vibrance to make tones pop and use temperature or tint to warm up or cool down the image. Sharpening and clarity can make textures stand out, and noise reduction helps smooth out any grainy spots, especially in night shots.
Don’t forget cropping and rotating to frame the photo nicely, and if colors look a bit off, a quick white balance adjustment can fix that too.
Less Is More
Finally, remember that authenticity is the key to a successful story, especially on social media. Some people leave their images entirely raw, but true pros make their shots feel organic and low-effort, hiding any evidence of editing. You should aim to softly elevate your images, not make any dramatic changes that take away the soul behind the shot.
Similarly when it comes to product shots, images need to look as close to the real thing as possible. You may feel the need to tweak certain things on the product itself, but enhancing the images too much can make them feel inauthentic, and perhaps even misleading. Instead, always run the route of letting your product and service quality speak for itself. After all, if you stand by your company’s offerings, minimal tweaks would be needed to make them presentation-worthy.
Final Thoughts
From behind-the-scenes footage to showing off sneak peeks of your new products, taking pictures is one of the most powerful ways to give people a glimpse into your business. Maintaining the methods we’ve outlined above can help you make sure your company’s media assets consistently meld with your branding and are always well-presented to share with your wider network.
Just take the time to find your brand’s voice and stick to that quality when you find it. That’s how you honor your company story and get to add ‘storytelling’ and thoughtful photo edits to your ever-growing list of skills as a modern-day entrepreneur.
