Focus: Workflow

Hey,


So I thought I would do a quick-ish summary and walkthrough of how I edit my landscape photos.  More particularly my most recent waterfall shots at Inglis Falls.  I do pretty much the same type of things to my landscape photos but depending on the photo and exposure I tweak them all slightly differently but the same general gist.


I decided to use the waterfall shots since I used my timer on my camera which took multiple photos each time.  So I have multiple copies of pretty much the same shot, just the water looks slightly different in each one due to the water changing paths a little (no big deal).  And what better way to demonstrate the differences each of my edits do.


So first I will start with my unedited photo.  So this is straight out of the D90.

Unedited - Inglis Falls 

It is a good photo but I find it doesn't really catch the eye as much as it could.  Due to the long exposure, I think the colours fade just a little because it is a lot of light coming into the camera.  As well the photo is just a little lighter than I want it.  Not that I had the exposure off, or it was under or over exposed, just it is a little flat.

I do my editing in Aperture.  So if you have Aperture, thats great (go Mac) and if not that is okay since I am sure editing suits are all pretty much the same for what edits I am doing here.  So step one, I increase the contrast a little.  (On Aperture I upped it to 2.0)

Contrast - Inglis Falls

This helps catch the eye a little more since it a little darker, not as flat looking.  However you don't want to over do this (or any other edit for the most part) or else it will just look really fake.  As well, when you increase the contrast you lose a little detail in the dark regions of your photo so be careful.  If that is what you want, then by all means but personally I want landscapes to look like how I saw it.  That is why I love wide angle lenses since the photos don't look like a snap shot of it.  Anywho, back to the edits.  

The next two steps will help have the colours pop as well be more like how I saw them when I was perched on my rock taking the photos*.  So first I usually play with the saturation by increasing it a little. So the below photo is with contrast as well as and saturation increase. (Increase saturation to 1.1)

*(As I said in my post about these photos, I was with my friend who just purchased a D7000 so he took a shot I believe of me perched on my rock I had to climb onto to get these shots.  I will be writing a post about what one must do sometimes to get a "the shot." So it helped having my friend there to take a photo of me on my semi-sketchy rock in the river.)

Contrast + Saturation - Inglis Falls

Next to help with colour I increased the vibrancy a little which helps the colours be well, more vibrant (and for those who don't want the word used in it's def'n, the colours are more vivid and less dull).  (Increased the vibrancy to 1.0 I believe)

Contrast + Saturation + Vibrancy - Inglis Falls 

So with that, those are the main things I do to my landscapes to help them look a little more like how I saw it.  The D90/lens usually does a great job however in some cases these edits help a lot.  This was also a good example since the colours and over all image fades a little when you gather a lot of light when using slow shutter speeds, I find.  Using my macro lens I never touch the photos unless it is portraits.  So my frog's eye shot you may have seen (if not check it out), I didn't edit that at all.  No cropping or vibrancy, nothing.  However landscapes do sometimes need some work.  Before I was never one to really edit my photos however now I have learned to bring all my photos up to the same level and sometimes that means I have to do minor things to them.  When you put them all together, you can get one great shot.

Also I sometime burn or dodge photos (brighten/lighten) if certain areas would do better being darker or lighter.  I rarely do this because it usually looks bad (or I am bad at it) but I usually just stick to the contrast to control that.

So this is not the be-all-end all with editing but it is a few minor things you can do to make your photos pop a little more.