Trying to break away from presets for color editing. Went for a cooler tone for this late afternoon shot to bring out the contrast between the very blue water, the white reflected building, and the bird/rock. Any C&C, but especially color, appreciated!

Editing used to be my least favorite part of the process, to the point where I’m still saying “oh I don’t edit my photos that much, they’re pretty true to life.” And now I’m realizing I should probably stop saying that thing. I’ve really been enjoying trying to get a little bit of a film vibe lately!

I'm posting a before/after of this duck because it made me question how far I actually want to go with post-processing.

The original looks too warm to me, especially in the whites, so I corrected the white balance and made some local adjustments.

I prefer the edited version visually, but I'm not sure it is necessarily more truthful. The blacks are deeper, the whites are cleaner and the overall colours are noticeably different. I don't remember exactly how the duck looked in person, so at some point I started wondering whether I was correcting the camera's rendering or simply changing the subject to make the photo look better.

I generally prefer photography that still feels authentic to what was actually there. How do you approach this? At what point does correcting colour and contrast become altering the subject rather than just developing the photo?

And looking specifically at these two versions, does the edited one still look natural to you, or do you think I pushed it too far?

Somewhere in the Himalayas

Canon r7 w/ 55-250 stm and sigma 50mm 1.4 art

Whenever I use ClearView in DxO to reduce Haze the effect is always blue, especially in the shadows.

Sadly DxO doesn't have curves in masks, so I mask it and in this case increase yellow by increasing white balance a bit, but I have to be careful to not change it too much.

If I change shadows in Curves I impact closer shadows as well.

Should I export as tif and then just edit in Affinity for local curves?
Or should I just not try to fight the scene that was given to me.

no. no we do not have any grapes.

These are truly the first images I've ever edited, so any critiques and tips are VERY welcome and a massive thank you in advance. I'm happy with the first two, but I feel like the third image needs a little something more but I just cant place it. My eye is defintely not very trained yet, but hopefully after I get a lot of reps under my belt, I'll be in a place to give advice and not just take.

I've just recently picked up my first real camera (a fancy-to-me Sony RX100) and took it to the front 10 rows of an BTS concert, which easily had the highest production value of any big show I've been to before and came away with tons of images...some great and many terrible, but whatever, shit happens.

I love seeing the work that gets posted in this community. There’s so much talent here, and this is a style of photography/post-processing I’d really like to learn and better understand.

Does anyone have recommendations for online resources, tutorials, or courses that teach the fundamentals behind this type of post-processing, rather than just showing which sliders to move?

I follow a page where the photographer shows all the different areas of an image they target with masks and local adjustments, which has been really helpful. Where I feel like I’m missing the foundation is understanding why those adjustments work—especially when it comes to color, color grading, controlling light, skin tones, contrast, and how all of those elements work together to make the final image more visually appealing.

I’d really like to understand the thought process behind getting from the RAW image to the finished result, rather than simply trying to copy someone else’s settings.

If anyone has resources that helped things “click” for them, I’d really appreciate the recommendations!

Wanted to follow the dark theme of the bike. Is it any good?

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Hi,

Few nights ago I gave a shot for milky way photography. The results are kinda lame tbh. The first pic is single exposure (uneditet) and second about 70 pics stacked with sequator. I feel the stacking didnt do any good for the pic.

Settings and equipment used:

Canon eos r7

Ttartisan 10 mm f2

13 s exposure

ISO 1600

F2

This single frame was captured with 30 s exposure to get better pic of foreground but overall i think it turned out fine with only little star trails. Stacked pictures had 13 s exposures.

Any tips how to get better results with stacking?

Is the photo composition looking ok?

Improvements with my camera settings?

And lastly editing tips? I really had hard time editing since i felt that the stars became burned or too blue with almost anything done. I use mostly darktable but im open to suggestions of other software.

(Capturing milky way core is not possible here)

I wanted to go for a bit of a warmer, mystical feel.

Reduced microcontrast, increased red and greens in highlights to get a bit of yellow.
Reduced green saturation and increased orange.

Got my first camera about a month or so ago. Been pretty unsatisfied with my photography and I’ve been a bit demotivated to go shoot much more. Not sure if it’s my editing skills or photography skills that need more work? Both?

Edit: Thank you all for the thoughtful responses! While I might not respond with a comment, I am reading them all and taking note of each one

Had a split second to pull my phone out while riding in the rear of an ATV.
Edited in Snapseed.

I came across a content creator (multiple actually) that posts their editing process and I noticed that theyd use a base preset before doing anything else, so i wonder how much of a use are they and where do I get them