Steps for Sports Photo Editing in Photoshop

For most people around the world, sport is a matter of passion. Even more, sports and everything revolving around it is equal to the sport itself. Such as the case of sports photography. Sports as a whole is a huge part of our culture – something that connects us all in a matter of seconds.

From the Football World Cup to Wimbledon to Superbowl, the hardship of playing the sports and representing it on the front page is equally challenging, if not more.

The intensity, featuring the competition, buildup leading up to the match – everything is important. Yes, I’m talking sports photography and sports photo editors in general.

What is Sports Photography?

Sports photography is not as exciting as we all think it is. Rather it’s quite the opposite.

What we see on the front page of your newspaper or a website is only the colorful, vibrant, and perfectly paused moment out of the 30,000 pictures that a sports photographer takes just for that single perfect shot! And that is mostly the truth behind every great intense sports image we see leading up to a match.

Well, for once, I can tell you, sports photography is different than what you capture and what you see on the front page. And that’s because, in most cases, these pictures usually come out as blurry because of all the moving objects that we try to focus on in the image.

This is what makes action photography so difficult yet so exciting that the passion drives you enough to take 30,000 shots just to capture one perfect moment that says it all.

After all, I bet not one sports enthusiast would be happy to capture that many photos of a special moment. Whether it’s a famous buildup for a UFC fight or a Cristiano Ronaldo goal, a blurred photo is enough to ruin your day.

But with these tips, I can guarantee you that your next shoot will be at least good enough to take one crisp shot out of the bunch that will be good enough to tell a thousand words.

Why Editing is Important for Sports Photography?

In the modern time of photography the way of capturing photos become too fast than at any past time ever, and in some events especially sports there is no time to do arrangements for a single photo. The photographer has to shoot first and think later about the photos. For capturing any historical moment in a photo, the photographer has to capture hundreds to thousand of images in a single event.

It’s not possible to impress viewers with random a photo nowadays. Post-editing of a selected photo can make the photo more attractive to people. A simple photo can get a soul with the perfect blending of editing. Although a photographer’s skill of capturing the perfect photo in perfect timing is also important to represent.

After capturing a photo, sometime the photo can’t reach the level that the photographer had imagined when the photo had been captured. In this situation editing with the best photography tools in photoshop can make the best image possible as it had imagined before. Every photographer has some personal style and time sense for capturing a photo of different sports.

Are There Any Tips for Better Sports Photography?

Being proactive and reactive in the right moments and preparing for the right moments –are the two pieces of advice I give to all interested in sports photography.

And as trivial as it may sound, being a better photographer requires a lot of action, particularly because it is a continuously learned skill.

The goal is to focus on better photography, great angles, sufficient lighting, the timing for a shot, and more. The more you focus on capturing a perfect photo, the less you need to worry about retouching it to make it look bold and colorful.

Most people would consider advising about a decent spot, but you’ll always get time to improve on that.

Here are my top 5 tips to improve on sports photography as a beginner:

1. Adapt With The Environment

A picture needs to speak for itself and express the emotions behind the moment to connect with the audience. And to do that, you definitely need to get accustomed to the environment you want to capture.

For example – if you’re visiting an F1 track for the first time, show up early before the race starts and explore the place. Try to relate with the places that you know create intense moments. Try to find your own spot and explore the area.

Above all, there is a saying I hear experienced sports photographers say that goes like this – the environment you choose sets the stage for the quality of the image you’ll get. The goal is to pick a spot where you can capture the extreme intensifying moments without frequently changing the direction, position, etc.

Even more, changing the placement every now and then only ruins your concentration and the extreme settings based on which you’ll operate.

2. Key to Success Is The Shutter Speed

One of the most common tips to take stunning action sports photos is by increasing the shutter speed. The idea is to increase the speed of the shutter to faster than the speed of the action itself. You can try to take some pictures keeping the shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second.

But, here’s the caveat. While you will be taking many pictures of the moment, at the same time, you will also have to compromise other functions of your camera to focus on the high shutter speed.

But you can also solve that by adjusting your lens aperture, i.e., the F-STOP on a DSLR camera. This setting allows enough light to enter through the camera so that you can take many photos in the blink of an eye.

However, most modern DSLR cameras are now equipped with a separate sports mode that allows users to use some predefined settings if they’re not comfortable changing the settings manually.

But, the more you get accustomed to your camera, you’ll start to understand that you always have more control over the image with manual settings rather than just changing the modes.

3. ISO Matters

The ISO settings lay the foundation for your ever-changing shutter speed and aperture settings. Because let’s face it – shutter speed and the aperture settings work hand in hand to take a perfect shot of your desired moment. And to do that with finesse, one has to allow proper light to enter the camera, which is exactly where the ISO comes into play.

Here’s how the basic principle works. When you’re working in broad daylight with enough light sources, keep a low ISO. You don’t want to overexpose the picture with too much light, which may change colors and ruin a perfectly good image.

On the other hand, it’s better to use a high ISO while working in a darker environment. This allows more time to collect more light into the camera to illuminate the subject you’re trying to capture. Such a setting is good for night-life photography, silhouetted environments much like indoor courts, etc.

4. Never Be Off-guard

Sports photography is intensive. Sometimes, the greatest and the most creative shots come from situations you don’t normally think of capturing. You never know when you’ll get the perfect moment you’re hoping for.

Sometimes it may come after a big match which we often think happens during the match, but that is not always the case.

The key thing here is to be reactive. So, whenever there is action on the field, you need to get moving and clicking, i.e., reactive to the situation.

5. Teaching Yourself To Be Proactive

One of the most crucial parts of action photography is learning to act proactively in certain situations. What I mean by that is – you need to be two steps ahead of the moment.

Being proactive is more of an instinctive training rather than calculated efforts to take snaps at the right moment.

It is important to anticipate the moment and start clicking early to capture the good moment. Being proactive doesn’t come over a few weeks of practice. But if you do reach that point, I can guarantee you that you’ll be able to visualize a frame on and off the camera.

6. A Good Lens Matters and Using Auto-Focus

Apart from all the skills, a good lens is a must for taking good pictures. And if you don’t want to miss out on important action moments, use autofocus on your camera to avoid getting a blurred picture on your favorite frame. It happens a lot of times when starting as a beginner.

How to Edit Sports Photography [ 7 Quick Ways]

Post-processing the images after a game is ever more important to get the right picture on the front page. And that means you need to get all hands in with a photo editor like Photoshop.

Here are some common techniques to enhance your image quality or separate distraction to focus on the main action.

Here are some actionable tips that I recommend every beginner should know:

1. Crop The Image to Remove Distractions

Cropping the image is important to remove the background distraction to retain the viewer’s focus on the action itself. Photoshop has a default crop tool that you can use to crop in two ways – Freeform Cropping and Aspect Crop.

Freeform cropping is usually the best way to go where you can drag the dimensions of the part of the image you want whereas, the aspect crop retains the aspect ratio of the image and cuts the image proportionally.

2. Enhance Lighting to Draw The Focus

The only thing that separates a dull and faded image from a vibrant one is – light. Using the lighting tool in Photoshop is one of the most essential skills. And even more, knowing where to increase the light on the image helps to retain the viewer’s necessary focus.

Here is how you can do it too:

Step 1: Duplicate the background layer

 Duplicate the background layer from the layers panel. The easiest way to do that is by clicking the chosen layer and dragging it at the bottom onto a New Layer, and you’ll have a copy.

Step 2: Rename the New Layer

Rename the new layer into something like – Background Copy. You can do this by double-clicking on the layer and writing down the name you want.

Step 3: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter

To put a blurred effect on the ‘Soft Glow’ layer you can apply a Gaussian blur filter. The idea is to mix the blurred layer with the real image such that the ‘Soft Glow’ layer complements the blur. And to do that, we can apply a subtle blur to soften things up and keep the subject in focus.

To use Gaussian Blur Filter, Go to Filter Menu from the top right of the screen, choose Blur from the drop-down menu, and from the options, choose Gaussian Blur. This should give you another box to choose the Radius of the image. A good value is somewhere in the region of 10 pixels.

Step 4: Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light

Changing the Blend Mode to Soft Light does two things on the image. One – it increases the overall contrast, and two – it makes the color appear more vibrant. We do it by changing how the background copy layer interacts with the original image to create contrast.

The Blend Mode allows you to change this as you can select the option from the top left of the layers tab and choose Soft Light from the dropdown.

Step 5: Decrease the overall Opacity Level

Decreasing the overall Opacity level gives you the finely tuned effect you want. You adjust the opacity settings from the upper left corner of the layers tab, which is directly across the Blend Mode option.

3. Create Smart Objects Within Your Image

Using Soft Light and Gaussian Blur does your job all too well if you know what to do and by how much you want to change your image. But what if you want to revert your changes? Would I need to sieve through all those layers I created back again and adjust them from scratch?

Here is the problem – there is no shortcut to go back. Plus, it’s tedious. Best solution – create Smart Objects.

Smart Objects is a layer of the original image in Photoshop that retains the original image quality and the image information. It is a revertible method of editing specific parts of images such as – scaling, rotating, skewing, distorting, transforming, and etc.

Creating smart objects of the specific part of the image will help you to retain the entire effect, the Blur filter, and keep the soft glow you want. Alternately, you can also remove several layers from an image by using the smart object tool. Here is how to create a smart object:

Step 1:

Choose the specific file and open it as a Smart Object. Select and click Open to view it in Photoshop.

Step 2:

Place the Smart Object on an existing File, go to File>Place.

Finally, select the file size, image position, and finish off by double-clicking on the image.

Step 3:

Select the Background layer that you want to convert into a smart object.

Go to Layer>Smart Objects>Convert to Smart Object.

4. Photo Retouching

Photo retouching is a way to remove small objects from sports photos as dust or dirt, camera lens, etc. Moreover, photo retouching for sports photos can grow glamour and gives a magical look. 

Way of Photo Retouching in Photoshop:

Step 1:

Duplicate the image lawyer, this will save your original photo from any damage.

Step 2:

Remove the wrinkles using the Patch tool. Click and drag the Patch tool and draw around a wrinkle. Then select and drag the part to another part to replace the wrinkle.

Step 3:

To eliminate the eye bags use the Clone Stamp tool. Point in the eye bag and set the brush capacity at 20%. Then with the brush paint several times, the puffiness will be removed then. 

Step 4:

To remove blemishes use the Sport healing tool. This tool will remove the spot marks, dirt, or dust easily in an automatic way.

Step 5:

Finally, save the image and export it.

There are many issues in sports photography as lighting, movement of players and more having to face the photographer.  Photo retouching can solve these kinds of problems very easily.

5. Create Smart Filters

Smart Filters are like any other filter on Photoshop only except for being used on Smart Objects and hence the name – Smart Filters. The smart objects hold the original data of a certain image part that you want to edit.

This allows smart objects a non-destructive way to create new filters for your image without changing its originality while also giving you the chance to revert to its initial state.

In technical terms, each time you apply a smart filter on a smart object, Photoshop installs the initial pixel information of the image and then reapplies the filter on top of it. This is how you can create Smart Filters on Smart Objects:

Step 1:

Select an additional layer you want to place on top of the smart object.

Go to Filter>Convert for Smart Filters.
Step 2:

Apply the filter you want. The filter is joined beneath the smart object layer and works together to create the effect.

Step 3:

To apply Shadow/Highlight as Smart Filter.

Go to image>Adjustment and choose a filter mask on the image, and you will have a separate alpha channel next to the adjustment window.

6. Layer Modification in Photoshop

When it comes to applying identical effects to multiple clips, employing an adjustment layer becomes necessary. This allows for the utilization of either a unified outcome or distinct results within the same adjustment layer.

It is important to note that such modifications do not bring about permanent alterations to the image’s pixels. Thus, you have the freedom to remove any adjustments made and restore the original image at any given time.

To initiate the process, begin by generating a fresh adjustment layer in Photoshop. Proceed by right-clicking on the image and opting for the adjustment layer feature. Then, proceed to select the exposure option and determine the desired value. Following that, create an additional layer through the same method and choose the levels option.

While the layer panel remains open, navigate to the black panel and slightly darken it. Similarly, if dealing with light objects in the image, the same process can be applied to the white slider.

7. Pen Tool Is Your Best Friend

A lot of times, you need to exclude elements from your background to make it look good. But removing the background seems all too complicated. This is where you use the pen tool. If you’re unconvinced about the dull look or the improper shape of your images, use the pen tool to reshape things the way you want.

Also, color correction in certain places of the image can change the outlook of the image, which you can do with the pen tool. This is possible if you learn to use multipath for color correction, color mapping, and color enhancement in an image.

To Sum It Up

In a nutshell, sports photo editing is a job of its own kind and requires you to grow a certain set of skills specifically catered to becoming a good sports photography editor. In my defense, this guideline here will provide you a jumpstart with the skills you need to get started – a basic outline, if you will.

But the key factor to note here is passion and the drive to keep going and learn from your mistakes to do your own editing. And in the end, learning how to do perfect sports photo editing will help you get to your ultimate destiny.