Editing Images
Derek Smith • 22 May 2021
Before Editing
Photo By: Derek Smith
After Editing
Photo By: Derek Smith
Following on from my previous blog posts, today I would like to discuss editing the images that you have carefully, and thoughtfully taken.
Naturally an image editing software will be needed, on a smartphone or tablet several good editing suites are available some free, and some paid for, I find Snapseed useful on a smartphone. A basic free image editor for Windows is FastStone, which I enjoy using because of the keyboard shortcuts. Darktable, RawTherapee, and The Gimp, are free “open source” image editors which can yield good results on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. I have found the Darktable software very useful, and there are some excellent tutorials for this editing suite. Paid software such as Affinity, Luminar AI, Adobe Elements, and Capture One, have a single payment model, whereas Adobe has a monthly subscription model. I would suggest finding a trial version of the paid software and finding your way around the program with the aid of various YouTube, or Vimeo tutorial videos.
Now that you have the software on your preferred device, it is important to realise that there is not a “right way” to edit an image, however I would seriously advocate that you begin editing an image with the crop tool. Look carefully at the image, would the aspect ratio benefit from amending, a portrait may be improved by choosing a square 1:1 ratio, a landscape image may require a change to a 16:9 aspect, or even a freehand letterbox style. Apply any lens corrections needed, and adjust any verticals, or wonky horizon, clone or crop out any distractions.
Once the image has been tidied, now is the time to move onto the exposure, levels, saturation, and clarity adjustments, again no “right way” to do this, try not to overcook the image, again take time, possibly walk away from editing the image and return to it with fresh eyes.
More advanced techniques involve adding a graduated filter to tone down a bright area of an image, use the dodge, and burn tool to locally lighten, or darken parts of the image. A word on sharpening an image, rather than sharpen the whole image, termed a global adjustment, use a mask to sharpen just a part of the image, a photo of a bird in a tree may benefit from sharpening, but the tree is best left unsharpened.
Having a RAW image to work with leaves plenty of latitude to recover details in the shadows using the highlights, and shadows adjustments, whereas a jpg image may not offer the same degree of latitude. A RAW image can look very “flat” when opened in some photo editors, Affinity, and Darktable apply an initial tone curve to the image by default to alleviate this, but if you prefer the “flat” look, this can be turned off in software preferences.
Some photographers like to create a duplicate of the image in the photo editing software, so that a copy of the original image is retained, I don’t do this for 2 reasons, the first is that the editing software I use is non-destructive, so I can revert to the original from the “History” tab, and the second reason is to do with my work flow I always copy the images from the camera into a folder on an external hard drive, opening the image from that folder, and export the finished edit into another folder, which is a temporary folder designated as “Upload”, and I never save my edits, Luminar does by default, automatically, as it has a inbuilt Luminar catalogue file. My edited images are always manually uploaded, from the “Upload” folder to cloud based storage away from the computer, using Smugmug, Amazon Photos, Google Photos, and Apple Photos.
Personally, I use the Affinity editor, as well as the Luminar AI software. I have found the “Tone Mapping” persona in Affinity very useful, as some of you will have seen in my tutorial of editing a train at the platform. In Luminar AI I will sometimes use the supplied templates to edit an image with just a couple of clicks, saving lots of work. Affinity, and Luminar AI also have the option of creating personal adjustment pre-sets, or templates to save and use on a set of images. Recently I returned from a model photo shoot with over 200 images, all shot in the same lighting conditions, with the same camera lens combination. After selecting the first image and cropping / tidying, I applied one of the portrait templates which very nearly matched what I wanted the image to look like, I applied a couple of fine adjustments to the template, then saved the template as my personal template, and was able to apply this to all 47 images that I selected for keeping and sharing with the model, saving a lot of time, and giving a consistent “look” to all of the edited images.
I have included before, and after images of two barges entering a lock on the River Lee Navigation, shooting the scene as I did on the lock gates was unavoidable, so, the first task in Luminar AI was to correct the verticals, next cloning out the unwanted details in the water, editing this image manually was very difficult trying to keep detail in the sky, and in the water. After a frustrating time, I applied an AI template, and the image just “popped” with improved detail in the water, while retaining the sky detail, I was massively impressed.
Louth Photographic Society
The buffet and quiz evening was one of the highlights of our calendar, it's the culmination of the year's events before the Society takes a Christmas break. The buffet was excellently prepared by Jane, who is Graham's partner, with plenty of delicious food, pork pies, sandwiches, plum bread, with cheese, quiche, mince pies, and cake. Tony Gaskins produced an esoteric quiz, and Robin and Heather scored the most points with 48 points, I scored a miserable 17 points, but we all had a lot of fun with the answers. The raffle raised £47, with some members collecting more prizes than others, amid lots of laughter and banter. Overall it was an excellent evening, enjoyed by all. A big thank you to Jane for the buffet, Tony for the quiz, and Harry for organising the raffle. Wishing all our members, and readers a merry Christmas.
Good Morning, All We did go to the sand racing again last week, the weather was a bit overcast but as no sky is required for this kind of photography, so good action shots are still possible. Last week at the club we held our monthly competition, of prints, with the categories of "People" and "Open". There was a very good entry with some excellent prints. David Whitehouse came first in the People section with Dave Turner winning the Open section. All the results are on our website under competitions with a blog on the evening as well. This week our Christmas buffet and quiz night will be held. The buffet will be provided for you but feel free to bring a drink along with you (a beer or glass of wine if you wish). Dave Mann will also be providing tea and coffee. Tony is doing a quiz for us all so bring a pen and paper if you remember, Christmas jumpers are optional. Harry will be selling raffle tickets, and if you would like to provide a prize please bring it along and give it to Harry. Regards Graham
A print competition was held last night with the categories of “People”, and “Open”. The judge for the evening was Dane Butler, this was his second time judging with us, and he is showing much more confidence in judging at photographic clubs. In the “People” category there was a wide variety of inventive images of people, from solo portrait style, to street, and groups of people, the highest placed print in this category was the “Pride Celebration (Cologne)” taken by David Whitehouse. In the “Open” category Dane had to judge wildlife, portraits, landscape, macro, and architectural prints, I thought he did a superb job, his choice for the top spot was “Cloud Inversion Summit of Snowdon” by Dave Turner. The website Competition page has been updated with the images, and results.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we viewed the Lincolnshire photographic Associations mono group presentation, Dave Turner who goes to the group talked us through the evening with Chris Birchmore and Richard Hildred talking about their photographs. There is a blog on the evening on our website, but inspired by the evening I thought I had better try a few mono photographs myself. This week, Wednesday 10th December, we will hold our monthly print competition, with the categories of "People" and "Open", to be judged by Dane Butler from Dunholme. There are good number of entries so should be a very good competition. The following week, Wednesday 17th December, is our buffet and quiz night, for new members the buffet will be supplied and anyone who would like to donate a raffle prize please give it to Harry. The evening is for members only. Regards Graham
Last night members were treated to a showing of the LPA (Lincolnshire Photographic Association) Mono Group presentation. Three of our members, Dave Turner, Richard Hildred, and Chris Birchmore are members of the LPA Mono Group. Dave Turner excellently presented this showcase of the Mono Groups work, many of the images presented were stunning, and inspirational. A simple photo of a padlock on a gate took on a different dimension when presented in monochrome, and landscape photography becomes dramatic in monochrome, especially with a moody sky. It was a very interesting, and well attended evening. Thank you to Dave Turner for presenting, and Dave Mann for the refreshments.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held a committee meeting, with all committee members in attendance. Harry will once again run the Christmas raffle on our buffet and quiz night, if any member wants to donate a prize, Harry can now accept them, obviously if it's a perishable prize then bringing it in on the night would be better. We are holding a 70th anniversary exhibition next year at the Louth Museum, if any member has local prints that they think may be suitable to put in the exhibition you can bring them to the club any time now. Derek has done a blog on the night with more information. This week, Wednesday 3rd December, we are viewing the LPA mono groups presentation, Dave Turner is a member of the group and will talk us through what the group do and if time allows show us some of his own mono prints. Don't forget to bring your prints along this week for the print competition, with the categories "People" and "Open", to be held the following week, email your titles to Dave Turner in advance please. Regards Graham
We held a Committee meeting last night in place of a regular meeting. The Committee meets twice a year to discuss items pertinent to effective, and smooth running of our Society. The Society celebrates 70 years of continuous operation next year, and we intend to show an exhibition of photographs taken over those years at the Louth Museum. The LPA Battles print competition will be held next year, and consists of 3 rounds held at photographic clubs throughout Lincolnshire, with a final round held at Nettleham. Louth has been drawn to meet with camera clubs in Grantham, and Axholme, and as you can understand this will entail a far amount of travelling. There is a proposal to the LPA which is currently under consideration which would reduce each club entry to 10 prints and for the whole competition to be held at Nettleham in 2027. Our current annual project is “Prime Time”, that is one photo for each month of the year taken with a fixed focal length lens, a prime lens, my choice for this year has been a 45mm lens, which is a full frame 90mm lens. Members show their annual project photos in the January of the following year. The Committee has decided on the project theme for next year as “Water”, which should give members a chance to demonstrate some creativity, as can be seen from the attached image. Our Christmas social event will be held on the 17th December, a buffet will be provided, there will be a quiz, and a raffle, the door entry charge will be £3 for the evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our PDI of the year, it was a well-attended event and thanks to Harry's organisation skills it all ran very well. Congratulations go to all the subject winners: Pictorial, Harry Kerman, Record, Dave Evans, Portrait, Derek Smith, Photojournalism, David Evans, Landscape, Dave Turner and Natural History, Graham Harrison. The overall winner was Harry Kerman. Well done Harry a great photograph of a White Cosmos. All the top three in each subject are on our website Competition page. Don't forget if you are entering the December print competition, with the categories of "People" and "Open" send your titles to Dave Turner please. The prints need bringing in a week on Wednesday. This week, Wednesday 26th November, we are holding a committee meeting, committee members only for this one please. For newer members we hold two committee meetings a year to organise events and the smooth running of the club. Regards Graham
Last night we held our PDIOTY (PDI of the Year) competition, our judge for the evening was Jorg Malinowski. These annual competitions are an opportunity for members to showcase their best images from the year, some of course from the monthly competitions, as such the competition entries were of an extremely high standard. Jorg performed an excellent job of judging the entries, and the results are all on the website Competition page. Congratulations to Harry Kerman for gaining the title of PDI of the Year with his White Cosmos image.
Good Morning All While we were away the other week we did have a walk around Blackpool. I only took my compact camera which I bought in 2011 but it still works ok and takes decent photographs. It is a Panasonic LX5 which fits in a pocket and is useful now and again. Last week we had mini lectures; photographs we had taken on this year's outings. Four members took part with Richard Hildred filling in with wedding photography from forty odd years ago, a very interesting look at how Richard went about photographing weddings, very different from today with far less photographs been taken. The outings did show we managed to photograph insects and birds on our walks around Red Hill and Rimac. I finished the evening with photographs taken in Somerset and Devon in 2020. This week, Wednesday 19th November, we hold our PDIOTY (PDI of the year) to be judged by Jorj Malinowski of Lincoln. It will be an evening of our best photography and we have just over fifty entries. The NEMPF exhibition acceptances have now been decided, well done to Dave Turner who had two accepted and I managed one acceptance myself. The standard for acceptance is very high, we had four members enter twenty nine PDI'S all together and only three acceptances . We had a lot of near misses, the score required was twelve and we had twelve elevens between us. You will see the exhibition at our club next year. Regards Graham
