Photo edits can often become very complicated, time-intensive things, but they don't always have to be. This great video discusses the common trap of being overly complicated in your image editing.
Coming to you from Henry Turner, this insightful video discusses the issue of overcomplicating photo edits. I think a lot of the time, we do this simply because we intuitively associate time and effort with quality. In other words, it feels like a truly good image has to have had a lot of time put into it; otherwise, we have "cheated" in some way or something is wrong with it. And certainly, there are a lot of cases in which the final image you are going for will require a lot of time and effort, but there are also instances in which it simply does not take much to take a photo from raw to finished. For quite a while, I used to apply the exact same process to every photo, which generally consisted of about 15 steps, and it made for a lot of wasted time and bloated files taking up space they did not need to. Once I took myself off autopilot, things got a lot more efficient. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Turner.
some great "steady as you go" tips for the less experienced and as we know the inexperience tend to over cook most photos. I feel I'm starting over edit my pics again .
One little trick I use with most nature type photos is >> LR camera calibrations >blue primary >increase saturation . Although blue seems the better, red and green are also useful. My ''start up'' preset adds 21% to all photos on import .
Your last photo could use a bit of blue primary saturations IMO ;) ; but then I wasn't there thank goodness LOL. Too cold for the this Aussie
Something I noticed with the final edit -- I found the rock on the right side horizon rather distracting --- easy to remove or crop out . Newbies; it's often the little things / edits that make all the difference, and the viewer should not be able to see your edits/adjustments . Henry's dodge and burn was a great example for that tip. BTW: you don't need PS for dodge and burn. The adjustment brush is so very versatile
Another tip for the less experienced --- do your edit >put the photo away for as long as you can; at least a day. When you reopen the photo the overdone edits and underdone edits will likely jump off the screen >fix them >put the photo away again >revisit later. ... It generally does not matter when cyberspace sees your (landscape) photo.
Finally Henry ; a big thank you for putting my mind a rest about what I miss with old Lr5 compared the newer versions . I can now see I don't really need the latest bells and whistles
Great editing video Henry :)