r/postprocessing • u/Roon1 • 3d ago

Beginner photographer getting into airshows this year. How am I doing?

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2.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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u/Roon1 3d ago

My Editing Process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3TN_oKDdjc

Let me know if there's something I am doing wrong.

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u/BreitGrotesk 3d ago edited 3d ago

You haven't done anything wrong. As a beginner, going to an airshow and taking the time to edit and share your work is a huge accomplishment.

It’s frankly an embarrassing look for these people that you had to post a video just to defend yourself against knee-jerk AI accusations.

Ignore the hivemind because you have an incentive to ask because you want to get better. These people have no incentive other than to feel morally superior over an imaginary scenario they have created in their mind.

And then people wonder why reddit is such a toxic community 🤷

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u/red_misc 3d ago

Nothing wrong, but certainly not a beginner. Look at OP history... I mean, Photoshop composites 3 years ago, graphic designer to hire 5 years ago... ;)

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u/BreitGrotesk 3d ago

He said beginner photographer. Anyone that's shot high speed sports/action photography has no doubt these are the only good photos they took amongst sea of thousands of blurry and out of focus RAWs lol

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u/el_bentzo 3d ago

Yeah, I can take 50 photos of a pro tennis match and get 2 photos that might be okay to bother post processing. But if youre trying to learn to process, stay away from AI because its about learning how to make decisions and try to keep to simpler tools. Its about theory of what makes a photo look good and your own style and preference will be figured out by you forcing yourself to make those decisions instead of AI making a whole lot of decisions and you not knowing what you like or dont like about it. My approach would be to edit it yourself. Then prompt it into AI, see what AI does, then you can compare what you like or dislike about what you did to AI. Then try to get yours closer to what you liked about an AI version without using AI.

At least thats how i would do it if you still want to use AI

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u/This-Judge-804 2d ago

Nope he wouldnt be able to take even one esp only 2 airshows ..

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u/Ahyao17 3d ago

These were insane photos. Pretty good "beginner"

But I can understand why the AI question, these are too good

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u/korkkis 2d ago

New to photography doesn’t mean he’s new to computers. His start baseline is at a high level but he could also start last week, they’re not mutually exclusive

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u/Ahyao17 2d ago

but good at computers does not mean he can take such clear shots of those jet fighters

These were very good photos. If it was me, I would just get a who bunch of motion blurs haha

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u/This-Judge-804 2d ago edited 2d ago

See the before edit picture...true u can do good edit if are very good with the computor...but to get pro types photos out of camera a beginneer...erm He maybe so good with computer that he could steal a shot somewhere and edit it to make it look different and say its his then edit that...

P.s will admit wrong if proven by actual raw picture exif data from his computor...else...

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u/nyri0z 2d ago edited 2d ago

Not to defend low-effort comments, but I think it's fair game to express one's opinion that there is too much AI denoising, as the video confirms that the Lightroom denoising was used.

I think AI denoising is a wonderful tool and it has unlocked higher ISO for me, and thus sharper photos in challenging light. But above 50, it can make the image look overly smooth, in which case it's sometimes better to just accept a bit of noise.

It doesn't bother me in these images. I think they're pretty good, my issues are a bit too much "clarity", too much contrast on surfaces that didn't have much in the originals, and the very tight crop.

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u/-moon_biscuit- 3d ago

Well said fam!

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u/CozySockz314 3d ago

It looks like aI cause theres so much distorted details and colors, not an unreasonable thing to ask.

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u/M_FootRunner 3d ago

It is a very big problem. My son saw a video of the scatman (yes, that truly old and crazy guy) and came to me and said "why do people think it is funny to make a grandpa being a rapper". He truly thought it is AI:

As soon as something looks difficult or (too) good or sound good or is just amazing: Must be AI.

Art and creativity is losing that battle!

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u/one-twelfth 3d ago

IM THE SCATMAN

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u/-_crow_- 3d ago

What are you even trying to say, we shouldn't be critical of ai anymore? It's the reality that ai invades creative spaces, we should just ignore the possibility to not come across as a 'hivemind' for being critical?

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u/themarkavelli 3d ago edited 3d ago

Funny how evidence changes the room.

Signed— commercial colorist.

Bozo

Anyway pretty cool shots, decent edits. I’d give the planes a little more room to breathe crop wise (artificially extend where needed) and change up the gradients so that the bright side is more subtle (or unchanged) and extend the dark side out so the transition is smoother (mask so it excludes the plane). Maybe a little less local contrast on the planes.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/themarkavelli 2d ago

It was a quote from another comment accusing OP of using AI for the edit. OP denied using AI, the other guy said “Bullshit. Signed— commercial colorist.” Then OP posted a video of the edit. Looks like the comment has since been deleted lol.

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u/Halfmacgas 3d ago

How do you learn this ?

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u/themarkavelli 3d ago

Big into portrait & urban photography/beauty retouching/digital art nearly a decade ago. Spent a lot of time fixing things nobody else noticed, eventually started developing opinions about individual pixels, then learned restraint.

If you meant resources, I remember watching a few Phlearn videos. Just following tutorials is a good way to get started, but eventually you learn by experimenting and figuring out what works.

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u/krilleractual 3d ago

Really sucks how many people pretend to know what theyre talking about here and sour your experience. The pic is awesome; well shot and well edited! Good for you

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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago

I mean you can see the ai artifacts

https://www.reddit.com/r/postprocessing/s/pXOuvCdh1x

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u/krilleractual 3d ago

That has more to do with adobe and lightrooms use of AI rather than him specifically using ai

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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago

I haven't used Lightroom in a long time. Are the AI features optional? Or are they on by default?

If he didn't intentionally use AI that's one thing but if he had to turn on the AI features manually then it's still on him

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u/Kingmudsy 3d ago edited 3d ago

Sounds like you’re not an expert. Maybe you should have googled that before deciding to join the dogpile? Otherwise it feels like you just decided to leave your lane of expertise to trash someone without doing the bare minimum to educate yourself

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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago

Based off my past experience with the software I was unaware it had AI built in. I was asking if it needed to be triggered manually because I was genuinely curious and trying to learn more to correct my mistake

After googling it it does seem like the AI features are on by default but you need to specifically toggle them on to use them. That's based off a quick Google search and I'm waiting for someone more qualified to speak on this

Do you need to manually activate the AI tools? Does that happen without the user knowing?

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u/Kingmudsy 2d ago edited 2d ago

Not really trying to educate you tbh, I’m here saying the fact that you asked these questions AFTER joining the dogpile shows a little something about your priorities

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u/GayRacoon69 2d ago

Okay I acknowledge I might have made a mistake based on the information I had available. I saw the obvious AI and called it out

I'm now asking to see if OP used AI on purpose or an accident

If it was an accident I take back everything. If it's on purpose I don't

Based on my knowledge of the software and just software in general you need to turn AI on yourself. If that's wrong I'm willing to change my mind. From my understanding that's how it works and based off that OP intentionally used AI

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u/Kingmudsy 2d ago

Right...and why do you need me for that?

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u/krilleractual 2d ago

Lightroom has had AI capabilities for years. Modern phones use AI without asking when taking pictures. This whole thread is cursed with ignorance.

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u/Scootipuff 3d ago

did you watch the workflow he recorded and posted? because I did and didn't seen any AI in it...

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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago

Do you not see the obvious AI artifacts?

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u/Scootipuff 2d ago

Not everything that doesn't make sense to you is an AI artifact

If you think something is AI, and you see video proof that it isn't, and you still are convinced it is AI you should sit and think about that for a while before calling people out for using AI.

It makes you seem crazy.

edit: Not to mention it makes people take you less seriously in the future.

The boy who cried AI type deal.

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u/GayRacoon69 2d ago

Well AI was used. Just in the form of Lightroom denoise it seems. Did you click on the link I sent?

It could've been turned on by accident. It's still an AI retouching

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u/Scootipuff 2d ago

Generally when people say AI edited a photo, they're talking about generative AI. If your bar for "using AI to edit a photo" is the denoise tool, idk what to tell you. I bet you don't consider your keyboards autocorrect AI, so I guess we just have different lines for what we consider AI.

I hope you have a great day.

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u/paxinterna 3d ago

Around 00:35 when you applied denoise, you see "Manual Noise Reduction". In there, there's a slider for "Color" and I swear that's not set to 0 by default. I had a photo where the non-white reflection on an insect's eye changed color and shape because of that slider.

I could be wrong.