Editing my Photos
Its always great to download photos from a trip on the computer & finally see how they turn out on a bigger/better screen & edited. A lot of the time some will turn out better then expected while others that at the time of shooting thinking i was on a winner dont quite turn out so good. Like most i shoot everything in Raw so every photo needs some editing to get as natural & what it was like at the time of pressing the shutter. Its hard to get them perfect but im confident that i get pretty close with most of my images. Photo editing software nowadays is very powerful & the things you can do with a image is endless like taking one sky from a landscape image & swapping it with a more eye catching sky from another image. For people that are skilled enough with editing software they can easily do this with it being very hard/impossible for anyone viewing the image to ever know about it, & with AI its only going to get worse. Personally i wouldnt get any enjoyment out of this, the best part of photography for me is to be out in nature experiencing a great sunset/storm & the whole lifestyle of camping/touring the country, but as long as photographers arent displaying/selling these highly edited images without clarifying what they have done to get there images then each to there own. Sitting in front of a computer screen for too long isnt my idea of a good time & i believe if a image requires a lot of editing then the light wasnt ideal so its never going to turn out great or look natural (not to mention my photo editing skills is very basic). I mainly shoot in ideal light conditions & tend not to take photos in high contrasting conditions that would require taking multiple images with different exposures & then blending them together (all of my images are taken with single shot). So the editing that goes into most of my images are done pretty quickly & its a fairly similar process for each image. I use lightroom for nearly all of my edits plus Photoshop to clone out (remove) anything in the image, things i clone out are small items in the image that are non permanent, unnatural things & dust bunnies (bits of dust that are on your sensor which show up in your images particularly in the sky areas). Some would argue you shouldnt remove anything which i get, but at the end of the day im happy with my photos & the editing that goes into them. I dont do it for the money (i fund my photography trips/gear through my own gardening/landscaping business that i started up over 14 years ago) & i certainly dont do it for the Likes as im not on any social media so i have the freedom to take photos i like, no pressure to produce images that will appeal to the masses online & if i find a great location but dont end up getting a good photo there then ill just re visit the spot another time & hope i get better conditions.
Below is a good example of what kind of edits i make & the results of it. First off i changed the profile from adobe color to Adobe Landscape, then increased exposure by +0.26, increase contrast +20, reduce highlights -40, increase shadows +80, darken blacks -20, increase clarity +8, dehaze +9, increase vibrance +20 & increase saturation +17. with sharpening increase amount to 50, detail to 50 & luminance to 70, then click remove chromatic aberration. This is the order i do my edits but i always have to go back over & readjust exposure/shadows etc to get right. After all that then i open the edited version into photoshop to clone out the unwanted bits.
This is the Raw image without any edits, as you can see its quite dark & wasn’t what it was like through my eyes so needs some editing. Horseshoe Bay - South West Rocks, NSW. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm ISO 100, 2.5 sec, f/14
This is the final edited image. I think its very close to a true representation on what it was like at the time of taking the photo. Notice the things i cloned out were the dust bunny top left in sky, the two sets of towels on the sand on the left & the two blurry swimmers in the water.
The above example is a very easy image to edit with no high contrasting bright & dark areas which is one of the reasons i love photographing on cloudy days. High contrasting photos can be a lot harder even with todays cameras having pretty good dynamic range. Shadows are much easier to recover detail then bright areas so its always good to under expose in these situations, but sometimes you just have to try your best with mixed results & appreciate how good our eyes are while our cameras arent always up to it. The below example is a high contrasting image that i think turned out well even though there are areas in the image that arent perfect due to the high contrast (mainly the dark areas). The following edits i made in lightroom for it were exposure +0.61, contrast +19, highlights -14, shadows +63, blacks -18, clarity +7, dehaze +11, vibrance +18, left saturation at 0, colour blue -15, sharpening 55. detail 55, noise reduction - luminance 55 & click remove chromatic aberration.
Unedited Raw image, underexposed to keep the detail in the bright section of sky. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm, ISO 100, 1/5 sec, f/8
Edited version, overall not bad considering the conditions. This one is a bit darker when uploaded to this page for some reason.
Below is another high contrasting image. This was taken early one morning (Note the one bright star still visible) looking east so no chance in recovering much detail in the shadows but luckily a silhouette works well here. The following edits were change profile to adobe landscape, contrast +7, highlights -51, blacks -21, clarity +5, dehaze +4, vibrance +16, saturation +14, sharpening 50. detail 50, noise reduction - luminance 55, click remove chromatic aberration & levelled horizon . Then in photoshop i cloned out some of the dead Pandanus leaves in the foreground that were reflecting the light
Unedited Raw image. Pandanus Tree - Little Bay - South West Rocks, NSW. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm, ISO 100, 25 sec, f/7.1
The end result which again im pretty happy with
The below shot is one of my favourites & unlike the two above there is brilliant detail right throughout the image. The following edits were change profile to adobe landscape, exposure +0.97, contrast +21, highlights -47, shadows +80, whites +7, blacks -18, clarity +9, dehaze +12, vibrance +18, saturation +15, sharpening 50. detail 50, noise reduction - luminance 55, click remove chromatic aberration.
Unedited Raw image. Bay of Fires - Tasmania. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm, ISO 100, 0.8 sec, f/13
Who needs a colourful sunset when your at a spot like this plus so easy to process
Below is the most ideal conditions for photographing rainforests/waterfalls - overcast & foggy. I used a Zeiss circular polarizing filter to reduce glare. The following edits were change profile to adobe landscape, Exposure +35, contrast +21, highlights -21, shadows +60, whites +21, blacks -18, clarity +9, dehaze +5, vibrance +19, saturation +15, colour blue saturation -13, sharpening 50. detail 50, noise reduction - luminance 55, click remove chromatic aberration.
Unedited Raw image. Lamington NP - Queensland. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm, ISO 100, 10 sec, f/8
This sunset i had no trouble with blown highlights or dark areas as the colour formed to the east. The following edits were change profile to adobe landscape, exposure +0.18, contrast +23, shadows +21, whites +37, blacks -20, clarity +7, dehaze +7, vibrance +18, saturation +14, blue saturation -13, sharpening 50. detail 50, noise reduction - luminance 65, click remove chromatic aberration.
Unedited raw image. Currumbin - Queensland. Canon 5DS R + Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 @ 21mm, ISO 100, 0.3 sec, f/9
Final edited image
As you can see when shooting in Raw you need to edit your photos to get them looking there best with the challenge of not going over the top. Shooting in jpeg your allowing the camera to make the edits for you & while they often turn out ok, a correctly edited raw image will always give you the best/most natural results. Editing brings out the best of a photograph but it wont make a bad photo good.