Phone editing workflows: what do you actually do between the shot and the post?

[StringTheory32]

Gear talk gets all the attention but the edit is where most photos are actually won or lost, so let us document real workflows. For the phone shooters especially, what happens between taking the picture and posting or printing it, apps, order of operations, how long you spend, the lot

Structure suggestion, name your editing app or apps, your first three moves on a typical photo, the adjustment you think is most overused by everyone else, and the one you think is criminally underused. The disagreements between answers will be the education

A plea for honesty about time as well, the difference between a thirty second straighten and crop person and a twenty minute local adjustments person is a genuine philosophical divide in this hobby and both camps produce great work, so own your number

And for the film era veterans among us, how much editing is too much before it stops being photography, or is that question itself a relic? Gently now, this one has started wars on lesser boards

[Vanessa26]

Thirty second camp proudly represented, straighten, crop, slight exposure lift, done. If the photo needs twenty minutes of surgery I did not take a good enough photo, next question

[EventHorizon63]

Twenty minute camp equally proud, the negative was never the finished photograph in any era, ask anyone who spent nights in a darkroom dodging and burning. The edit IS the photography, it always was

[WarpField69]

Most overused adjustment is saturation and it is not even close, half the internet looks like fruit squash. Most underused is the humble white balance, fixing colour cast improves more photos than any filter ever made

[QuantumLeap34]

Underused vote goes to local adjustments, one gentle lift on a face or a foreground beats every global slider, it is the difference between editing the photo and editing the world

[Fox]

Order of operations question for the room, crop first or last? I crop first so every other decision is made on the real frame, apparently this is controversial

[Always_David72]

Crop last defender here, keep the pixels until the end, sometimes the edit reveals the photo was about something else entirely and the crop should serve THAT discovery

[Phil]

The too much question has a simple personal answer, sky replacement is where I get off the bus. Enhance what the light did, do not hire a different sky as a stunt double

[Crossing]

Film veteran as summoned, and the honest answer is we manipulated everything within reach for a century, the ethics never changed, only the ease did. The relic is pretending there was a pure era

[Brittle Coder]

Practical tip that transformed my phone editing, do it the NEXT day. Editing while still in love with the moment produces oversweetened photos, the overnight cooling makes an editor out of a witness

[NeuralSeer]

The overnight rule is real and it works for writing too, apparently every craft has the same secret ingredient and it is simply going to bed

[Theo90]

Reading the thread conclusion in advance, both camps are right, saturation is a controlled substance, and the real workflow upgrade was honesty about our numbers all along