The ONLY Things You Need to Edit Gorgeous Photos

Learn about the hardware and software that I recommend for photo editing.

Introduction

In this tutorial, I’m going to be going over all the hardware and the software I use in my editing process. I’ve broken it down into ten essential items- five are hardware, and five are software. With that being said, let’s go ahead and start from the top.

Editing Bag

To start this list off, I recommend having a backpack that you can put all of your editing gear in. This means that no matter where you are, you can pick up your bag and go edit anywhere, at any time. This is especially helpful if you’re traveling for extended periods of time, living in a car, or hopping from hotel to hotel.

A solitary editing bag also forces you to consolidate your items and not get carried away with a huge laptop, keyboards, secondary monitors, or mice- all things you don’t really need. Now let’s cover what you do need.

This photo, taken at the Castle in the Clouds in New Hampshire was edited in a local coffee shop.

Laptop

First and foremost, you need a laptop for editing. And note that I said laptop, not desktop. This laptop will be the base camp of all your editing, and I’d recommend it over a desktop because if you’re doing adventure photography, you’re going to be moving around constantly. There’s two main specs to look for in your editing laptop.

First, make sure the laptop has at least 16GB of RAM. This will allow you to be able handle bigger files in Photoshop, especially if you’re shooting with a high resolution, and are doing complex edits. 

At 16GB you’re not going to experience lag, and you’ll even be able to edit basic videos with that much RAM, if you’re planning on doing mini travel vlogs. Trust me when I say there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to edit a photo on a laptop with low RAM- you’ll be experiencing crash after crash and get nowhere. Think of the extra couple hundred dollars as an essential purchase- not just a fluffy extra.

The second thing I’d recommend is that your laptop has a 4K monitor. Most professional cameras are taking photos with extremely high resolution, so editing those photos on a 1080p monitor defeats the whole point. You want to be able to see all of those details and edit what you need to edit.

As of 2025, when I’m writing this tutorial, the cost of laptops with these two specs will be between $1,500 and $2,000. You may be tempted to also consider getting one with a solid graphics card, but unless you’re planning on editing intensive video graphics in After Effects (or gaming,) you can skip out on the graphics card. (And save another $1,000.)

This photo, taken at Land’s End in Mexico, was a particularly large file to edit because it involved a Focus Stack and Sky Blend.

Hard Drives

Now let’s move into the third hardware item that I use, which are external hard drives. Personally, I like to get a new 3-4TB hard drive for every year that I take photos. 

Now obviously I take a lot of shots, so this might be overkill for some of you, but for me it helps keep things organized. I rarely go back to reference old photos, so I keep these hard drives in a safe place while I travel around with the current year’s drive.

One thing to note is that there are two different types of hard drives: HDD drives and SSD drives. I’d personally recommend SSD drives because they’re smaller, faster, and last significantly longer. The only catch is that they're much more expensive, but I see the investment as worth it for photos that are going to last a lifetime.

I also recommend having a small padded container in your laptop bag where you can keep your hard drives. This ensures they’re not bouncing around or hitting anything while you’re moving around. They’re the central point of all the photos you’ve ever taken, so you want to keep them as safe as possible.

If you want to be especially careful, you can back your photos up onto a cloud-based service like Backblaze, Google Drive, or Dropbox.

Thanks to my hard drives, I can easily access old photos like this one, which was taken off Highway 55 in Colorado in 2018.

Headphones

The next hardware item I’d recommend is a solid pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Now obviously this isn’t required, but I’d argue it makes a night and day difference if you’re frequently editing in public. Sometimes you don’t have much of an option as to where you’re gonna edit, so having headphones that drown out the world around can help when you’re in noisy cafés, bars, and restaurants.

Similar to photography, editing also has a sort of flow state that you get into to make incredible photos. Music is a great way to activate this, whether it’s downtempo electro or upbeat hip-hop. You’ll also find that different genres of music can impact the direction of your edit, so keep that in mind with what type of mood you’re inciting. 

Tablet

The final hardware item that I like to use while I edit is a drawing tablet. This is essentially a digital pen/paper setup that you can use as an alternative to a mouse or laptop pad when editing in Photoshop. I’d personally recommend the brand Wacom, which seems to be the gold standard for photographers due to its sensitivity and ease of use. 

As you’re going to realize later on in this course, a lot of photography editing involves precise painting, and a tablet setup can streamline this process. Ever since I started using one, I can’t go back to a mouse or that god-for-saken mouse pad.

In terms of size, all you need is a small one. Like I said before, some of the places you’re going to edit won’t have a lot of table room, and this thing can even fit in my car if I’m editing in the front seat. 

Now let’s move into the five software programs I use to edit!

The main company I am going to work with here is Adobe, so I’d recommend getting a subscription that includes Bridge, Lightroom, and Photoshop. Let’s break down what each of these programs are used for:

Having a tablet was especially helpful to edit photos like this one taken at Fallen Roof, where coloring in the different layers was necessary for the edit.

Adobe Bridge

The first program I use is Adobe Bridge, which allows you to sort, edit, and create a file structure for your files once they’re imported to your computer. It’s basically a system to organize your photos.

Adobe Lightroom

The second program is Adobe Lightroom, which is the main hub for all of my photos. After they’re imported to their respective hard drives, Lightroom is where I catalog, cull, and sort them for editing. It’s also where I do my preliminary edits to prepare the images for Photoshop.

I do want to note that I’m using Lightroom Classic, not Lightroom CC. Lightroom Classic is the desktop version, and it has significantly more features than Lightroom CC. Lightroom CC is the cloud-based version, which means that many of its features rely on an internet connection to work. This means it doesn’t work if you’re editing in the middle of nowhere.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is the third program I use, and it is where I do all of my main editing. As mentioned before I do a few preliminary edits in Lightroom, but the large majority of my editing, and most of this course, is in Photoshop.

Now, I realize this might make your heart start to pound because Photoshop can seem intimidating, especially if you’re starting from scratch. But I’m going to break it all down extremely easily, and take you through it one step at a time. 

It might be tempting to think you can do all of your editing in Lightroom, and you can- but at a certain point, you’re going to be held back from the advanced features that take your images to the next level. It’s much easier to start learning Photoshop right off the bat, so you don’t get stuck in the “I only edit in Lightroom” loop. 

Photos like this one, taken at Long Dong Silver, wouldn’t be possible without Photoshop to help with the Focus Stack, Sky Blend, and Dodging and Burning.

Luminosity Mask Plugin

The fourth software program that I regularly use is a luminosity-masking plugin. Now, if you’re pretty new to editing, this is going to sound like a completely foreign term to you. But it will all make sense once we get to the Luminosity Mask tutorial later on. 

All you need to know right now is that it’s a third-party plugin that you can buy for Photoshop that makes a certain part of the editing process significantly easier.

Personally, I use the TK Panel, but there are a variety of plugins you can use, and I’ll cover those more in detail when we get there.

This photo, taken at Cenote Ik Kil in Mexico, utilized a luminosity mask plugin to isolate the green colors and remove the background.

Cloud Backup

The fifth software program that I use is a cloud-based backup software. I’m pretty consistent about backing up all my photos to the cloud whenever I have the chance. Especially when I’m on the road- it’s easy to end up in situations where your gear could break, or worse, get stolen.

Personally I use a program called Backblaze, which is extremely easy to use. I’m not sponsored by them in any way, but I’ve found it’s the cheapest program and the easiest to use. You simply install it on your laptop and click “Back Up.” Now every single time I turn on my computer, whatever hard drive is plugged in will just start backing up whatever is new to the cloud.

Now I have a backup of everything I’ve ever taken- and it’s a small price to pay for the countless hardships I’ve gone through to get those photos. 

Conclusion

And that’s literally it. Those are the ten items that I use for my editing process. Nothing more, and nothing less for hundreds and hundreds of photoshoots.

Let’s go ahead and jump to the next tutorial, where I’m going to show you how to Import Your Photos. From here on out, every tutorial will be primarily in video format to show you how I edit on the laptop.