Hi there, again! 

As I promised in the last post, I would like to guide you 'how to edit a photo taken by your phone with a bright/clear light look. 
This mainly works out for the nature scene or food at the cafe. 

For a bright/clear look, I usually use 1) Photoshop mobile app. 
The app works out pretty well on enhance and make a picture clearer. 
So it's not focused on for Instagrammed looks or vintage style. 
It's for the situation that you took a photo where no light and only the natural light is available. 
In the situation, you still can make your photo at least the decent level to share with someone. 

So let's get started. 

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I took the photo here last week when we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant. It was a beautiful atmosphere around the old traditional house. I sneakily took a picture of outside garden below from the room I was eating. 

This looks very ordinary photo taken by a mobile phone. For the nature photo including a building is actually an excellent component to define light and contrast on a picture. 
To add lights on greens, contrast, and white balance can be done on Photoshop. 

before editing demonstration, let me give you a tip on an angle. 

Angle
When you want to take a photo of a part of natures, include a pillar of a part of the building on the bottom or the left side of a photo frame, but do not make them focused in the structure. It just an optional object to pull out the bright green side/blue side of the primary purpose, which is natures. 

Although the photo above is from the corner, I personally like the edge from the bottom and look up at the trees because it gives a picture has the feeling that audiences are inside the forest. 

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Edit
Let's edit the original photo. 
Here is the process of editing on Photoshop Express. Please take a look. 

Shadow: -50
Black: -70
White: -104
Tint: -27
Exposure: 8
Clarity: 45
 

Tip1: Enhance
First of all, Photoshop has the tool of Enhance. I set up that it automatically applies to an uploaded photo onto the app. This time, I did not use the device because Enhance actually deleted the colors of different colors of greens. 

Tip2: Filter
Next, choose your favorite filter. I usually use 'Koi.' It gives automatically adjusted contrast, shadow/light, and white balance.
But here is a warning part. Filter level is auto adjustment setting, so you need to adjust by yourself if it's too bright or too dark to make your photo your style. 

This photo below was done by the automatic setting.  As compared with the #1 photos of the editing process, you can see the automatic setting filter is too blight and kills the greens by lights, and also a whole definition of the photo is broad. 

The right side: Self-adjusted
The left side: Automatic adjustment

Tip 3: Crop
An advice here is that 'Crop.'  As mentioned above, having a pillar or additional object with a snapshot nature scene provides a picture of the sense that you sneak peak the moment, and audiences feel they are in that. 

When the photo includes a pillar or something objects, I'd recommend to add them on the bottom or the left side of the frame. 

In the original photo, I had the winder frame and pillars from the left side through the right side. The perspective, which the image is getting open to the right, is psychologically useful since the movement of human or objects from left to right means from the past to the future. 

However, I cropped them off and left the bottom side and a little bit the left side. It's because the primary purpose here is the traditional green garden outside, and pull out the beautiful lights and colors. So I left only the limited parts of the pillars and the window frame. 

Tip4: Exposure
Exposure is a handy tool in a nature photo, particularly in a lot of greenish pictures. It's because greens are the opposite color of the sunshine orange color. So this creates a sharp contrast, and lights give greens shiny in their way. 

However, Exposure does not work out well in a content of no contrast or definition in the original photo. Let's say that the bright sunlight with the beach sands. It becomes just a "bright" photo. No playful space on that. 

This time, I added Exposure because greens are the primary object and the sunlight perfectly looked from the behind leaves. So basically, I pulled the sunshine light out to stand them out. 
 

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Lastly, let's go review... 
1. Include an additional object on the left side or the bottom to feel inside the scene.
2. Use Enhance to polish your photo first. BUT not necessary in case it brews the colors off. 
3. Don't trust a Filter 100% and always your eyes are the last key.
4. Crop a photo in the perspective of getting open from the left side to the right side. 
5. Have Exposure (bright light) onto the whole picture to lighten up the primary object's color. And only use it for a photo already has contrasts. 
 

If you have any questions, suggestions, or photo style you want to learn, please email me. 

Thank you so much for reading. : ) See you in the next post!