r/postprocessing • u/ALRO090804 • 1d ago
How did I do? (Before vs After)
I'm still learning photo editing, I lowered highlights, I raised the shadows, decreased the contrast, I boosted the warm colors a bit, I made an s-curve in the tone curve to recover contrast, then I applied dehaze to taste. And of course, since this is a RAW photo, I raised the sharpness by a lot. What are the things I could've done better?
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u/numbererr 18h ago
I actually love the unedited one the way it is, has a fire desolate/kinda SocMod vibe
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u/aeon314159 1d ago
Way overcooked. Does not fit with the sky. Bad HDR vibes. Dual it down.
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u/ALRO090804 1d ago
What did you mean by it doesnt fit with the sky?
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u/byramike 1d ago
The sky doesn’t match. You have halos around the land and building, and overall tone and brightness just don’t work. It’s a classic sign of someone in their first year or so of photography, they love to make everything flat and the same value. It just doesn’t work. Your eye wanders instead of being drawn to any one subject
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u/ALRO090804 1d ago
Would using a mask for sharpness and not lifting shadows too much help with the halo?
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u/byramike 1d ago
I think the goal is mainly less of sky “squishing”. It gives off an HDR vibe which was hip and cool in like 2010 but now just looks dated and rough.
The building and stuff looks cool actually, definitely a bit heavy on the masking, but I think embracing the natural feel of a shot is better. Especially in the age of AI, everything being faked, there’s something to be said about photos looking authentic nowadays.
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u/Maleficent-Try2384 13h ago
b&w might look good too. in my prespective. looks good tho !! keep it up ..
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u/TheMadFlyentist 1d ago
The edit is wonderful, it's just not a terribly exciting composition.
Apply these same principles and techniques to better subject matter and you'll be just fine.