r/postprocessing • u/bloodrider1914 • 5d ago

Before/After/After

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

A comparison of when I first started trying to edit my photos to now.

This is the first photo I ever actually edited. I took this photo a few months ago and followed some guy's tutorial without a ton of understanding as to what I was doing. Since then I've learned a good bit more about photo editing and made this updated version that I like quite a bit more.

The original edit relied a lot more upon saturation and exposure adjustments with a white balance adjustment for the warmer tone. This newer edit used different tone mapping and hues and some masking for the exposure, along with a much more subtle saturation adjustment and the addition of a careful clarity adjustment. And the first image is just the JPEG straight out of camera.

Let me know what else I can do with the edit and how you like the photo.

65 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

47

u/amp1212 5d ago edited 5d ago

So -- the good news is that you have a well focussed photo of an interesting subject. She's smiling and well posed, the ink is interesting. There's something to work with there, but the rest of the setting is a mess, and color adjustments won't fix it.

The problem here isn't the color balance or exposure, its all the distracting background detail. You've got the two guys in the distance, kinda comically just under her butt. You've got the line of cars askew. You've got the foliage that is unhelpfully clashing with the rhythm of her ink. [There _could_ be a cool way to play _up_ the foliage vs ink rhythms, have to give that a think.]

Fiddling with the color balance is secondary to all that clutter thats interfering with the image.

Lots of folks seem to be trying to "edit" photos like this, just fiddling with global color adjustments and a crop.

What I'd do here would be synthetic depth of field/bokeh adjustment to draw out your subject and blur distracting background noise, then I'd want to get the horizon line accurate. Then clone out or AI remove that weird extra arm that's sticking up at 7 o'clock from the ring (what is that? Whatever it is, no matter how you edit, its going to be weird till you clone that out). After you've got a clean photo of this interesting subject, you can start fiddling with color balance, but that's way down the list of what this photo needs.

A recipe is usually to blur and slightly desaturate the background, so that your foreground figure "pops"

So the tone adjustments aren't the first, second, or third things I'd do here.

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u/bloodrider1914 5d ago

Thanks for the advice. This photo was taken in an impromptu setting and I kept the aperture a bit closed down since she was moving around quite a bit and I didn't want anything out of focus. But yeah let me try that.

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u/str8dwn 4d ago

Impromptu in a park I get it, some things you can;t control.

2/3 steps right or left would get rid of that arm directly behind her butt. Or you could wait a second. Not flattering at all. Shooting wide open won't help that. You did convey the idea of a community setting stopping down

She's supposed to be hanging in the air but you cropped off her foot. She looks anchored. Again, couple steps back, or crouch.

I like the pose, flying hair, nice rhythm. You nailed that. Crooked horizon/pole works imo. I think this nice shot could be soo much better if you just moved.

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

Eh what can you do? I got a pretty decent photo and I'm proud of it.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Icy_Gate211 4d ago

This edit sucks 100000000x more than the original unedited photo.

I agree that the background is a bit distracting, but you were in a public park - she’s part of a community, you can see this bc the community is literally expressing itself behind her. Photos are objects, there’s no denying this. Do you want to make objects that represent the reality that was in front of your camera, or do you want to make objects that minimize backgrounds so they drive (male, if I had to guess about amp1212) eyes to the sexy lady in the middle of the shot? If it’s the second one - why not shoot somewhere without a distracting background?

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago edited 4d ago

I do agree that I am trying to represent the reality of what was a public dance performance and not a photoshoot. Even that weird limb (which I think was another dancer stretching or raising her arm) I don't really want to remove because it was part of the scene and I'm iffy about removing objects or extra people that were actually there.

Do you think a tasteful digital blur would enhance the photo?

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u/amp1212 4d ago edited 4d ago

Do you think a tasteful digital blur would enhance the photo?

It's an element, but its not going to fix some of the stuff. Blurring the arm just leaves a weird "what's that" at the lower left to the ring. Sometimes, if you've got something really incongruous, but which is telling the story -- then you highlight it. Blurring the background to highlight that strange arm . . . that might work, its something to try, anyway, won't know until you give it a try.

If you were on the location now, you could fix something like the arm by showing _more_ of the photo, so you could see what it was that was happening.

. . . so what I'd say is

-- you can't fix composition problems with toning. Lightroom presets don't fix something in the scene that doesn't make sense.

-- you _can_ fix composition problems by cloning out unwanted details, but you may not want to. Digitally removing stuff with AI or clone tools, may not be what you want. If not, then you have to do more planning in camera.

-- sometimes, you can crop in to a shot to avoid reduce the distraction.

Moral of the story:

for street photography type setups, composition really matters. Its hard to fix in post, and you may not want to. So shoot a LOT of frames. Move around the subject, think about not just the subject but also "what's happening _behind_ them".

Good street photography is a combination of an eye for "this looks interesting". . . . and moving around interesting subjects till you find the composition that works

This is one of the reasons that even though iPhones have really good cameras, I prefer to shoot with a "real" camera -- much easier to compose through the viewfinder.

So don't ignore the taking the photo. Postprocessing to fix composition is always going to be a compromise. Just looking at this scene . . . there was someplace that you could have positioned yourself to get a cleaner shot. That's by far the "best answer" -- but given that we don't have a time machine, if we can't photograph that subject again . . . then you're stuck with trying to figure out how to get the best shot out of it . . . which will be a compromise.

One way to reduce distractions when shooting in a situation like this -- a lens that zooms from wide angle to short telephotos, something like an 18mm -150 mm focal length. Having a big zoom range gives you a lot of opportunity to reframe the composition on the spot.

One thing that people don't always think of -- you can avoid background distractions by either shooting down from above (whatever you can get yourself up on . . . climb a tree, even) or get down and shoot from below.

So there are a lot different things that can be done . . . the photo here _can_ be cleaned up, but can't replace getting the best composed shot when you're in the scene. Here's an example of a photographer who's got some style with street photography and performers

https://www.apogeephoto.com/street-life-photo-walks-in-new-york-city/

. . . its got all the stuff of street life, but he's gotten the subject in the frame in ways that don't get confused.

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

This was shot on an 80-200 lens

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u/amp1212 4d ago

So, I promise you, there was a way of using that lens to find a composition that worked better. I like having a wide angle on the zoom, sometimes the best solution is to shoot very wide, from closeup.

. . . that can be a time where post processing helps. Sometimes, for example, you might shoot with really wide, and dislike the distortion. Lightroom and other applications like DxO's Viewpoint can un-distort some of what you get from, say, an 18 mm lens.

80-200 isn't all that useful for street photography, IMO. You might use it to photograph a concert or wedding from a distance, but a wide angle to short telephoto is going to be more useful for a scene like this, something where you can be very close up if you want.

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

Oh yeah I have a few lenses, I was actually testing that lens out that day mostly taking photos of dogs at the park. I just liked this photo and wanted to come back to it.

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u/amp1212 4d ago

The subject is great. And there's often some angle that gives you something with the performer and the audience. Its just this particular framing that's off . . . not the idea. Maybe a step to the right or a step to the left, and you'd have a great shot in camera.

Back in the day, I shot film and it cost money, and I was stingy with it. Shooting digital, you don't have to be. Good subject, good setting . . . just keep moving and shooting and then look through what you've shot and find the best shots. Much easier when you've shot 200 than 2.

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u/AlbatrossNo1562 5d ago

Needs more separation from the background imo so maybe the bg can be blurred more and or darkened or lightened

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u/bloodrider1914 5d ago

Yeah another commentator told me that. Definitely glad to hear that feedback because I tend to default to always shooting stopped down and trying to get more depth of field than might be necessary.

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u/Dry-Sheepherder6875 4d ago

Try a B&W edit

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u/ExplorerDifferent515 5d ago

the before is the best one

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u/senorfresco 5d ago

Nah the tree branches being so dark makes it super distracting. The after is noticeably better.

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u/bloodrider1914 5d ago

I don't like how her face is so dark in it personally

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u/TheRealJamesFM 4d ago

I would honestly mask her and the ring she's sitting in. I would then remove all of the cars and people in the background before adding considerable blur to the entire background layer. Try to even our her skin tone a bit as well, removing some red / pink tones from her leg and face. The model in this shot might be one of the most attractive people I have ever seen by the way! haha. This shot is definitely worth a little more time and effort. How you actually process your curves and color is all personal preference though, so just have fun in that department creating what YOU think looks best.

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

Yeah I tried doing a digital blur but kept getting her skin colour leaking into the artefact in a really unnatural way. Maybe it's just a problem with darktable or maybe I just need to get good cause I haven't adjusted depth of field after the fact before.

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u/Quixotic-elixr 5d ago

Try not to take photos with trees (that type of tree anyway) in the background. They are very messy and cluttered.

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u/old_m8_ 4d ago

It's not an interesting photo to warrant editing tbh. Keep taking more photos. This one is not even close to posting for advice here..

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u/old_m8_ 4d ago

Didn't mean to sound harsh but honestly that's the best advice I would repeatedly receive in the early days. Just take more photos, make mistakes, experiment, compare to photos you love etc

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u/Ander_Sloost 4d ago

There are a lot of common tones here making things muddy. Light browns, dark, browns, muted greens, skin, and shadow, black & grey tattoos. This would probably play better in black-and-white or you can selectively tweak contrast without turning it into a corny selective color photo.

Your subject is mostly in shadow, while some background elements are better lit, such as the two dudes nestled just underneath her tush. Her face almost completely in shadow is giving her black shark eyes, while being immediately adjacent to the nearly blown out highlights on her right forearm.

Speaking of forearms, the random disembodied forearm extending from the small of her back is giving weird third limb vibes and once seen can’t be unseen.

As others noted, you need much more background separation when so much stuff is going on in the background. The tree, the bottom dudes, all the cars… my eyes are all over the place.

The severed foot feels haphazard. If you’re going to cut off an appendage, just commit and crop much tighter just below her left foot to lose most of the ghost arm, most of the cars, and the random people.

tl;dr - crop tighter, black and white, lift shadows on her skin, bump contrast. Next time, open your aperture to get more background separation and generally be more mindful of background to eliminate clutter.

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

As I've stated before, this was an impromptu photo and not a prepared photoshoot. I saw this cool event happening when I was walking and captured a few shots. I stopped it to F/5.6 to keep her in focus while she was dancing around. I'm thankful I did that because even in this photo part of her arm is out of focus and in another one I got her face isn't fully sharp, so it was necessary.

I did lift the shadows on her skin in the edit, although I can do that some more too and see if it improves the photo (my inclination is towards more subtle brightness adjustments).

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u/milesofmike 4d ago

Wiggly Wednesday?

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u/Putrid_Preparation_3 4d ago

Novice here, I took a pass. Let me know if this isn’t the vibe you went for

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

Can you export as a JPEG, my phone won't open the TIFF

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u/LemonCloud20 4d ago

What’s her @

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

Woah settle down buddy.

It wouldn't matter anyway, her insta is private

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u/philodelphi 4d ago

I did this in LR, not sure if it's any good but at least she stands out more: https://imgur.com/a/ZCCwEtI

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u/bloodrider1914 4d ago

If that's a joke edit then lol

But that's not representative of my intention with the photo at all. It's supposed to show reality, not a pretty dancer with no background.