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
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Roger Hance Memorial Lecture 16th October
Last night Lee Dixon from Cleethorpes Camera Club gave his first ever presentation to a camera club, which we were privileged to view. His presentation consisted of portraiture, creative, and his genre of choice; wildlife. Lee is an extremely talented photographer, with a highly creative portfolio, his portraits are quite atmospheric, unusual, and capture the essence of the model, and scene. For Lee’s creative work, he buys props from charity shops, often very cheaply, reusing those props in various scenes. For his composite work he will often take one of his photos of a room, and blend it with a subject in Photoshop using “blend” modes. For wildlife he visited Lake Kerkini in Greece to photograph the Pelicans, if the sky is a little on the bland side, Lee will often over expose the image resulting in a striking white background to the subject. On safari in Africa Lee showed us some amazing images of the wildlife, the close-up images of elephants, the wildebeest migration, and this stunning image of a cheetah. Lee was ably assisted by Mike Bennett. More of Lee’s work can be found on his website: https://leedixonphoto.co.uk/ Lee his kindly given permission for his images to be used in this post. Many thanks to Lee, and Mike for an amazing evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open", there was a very high-quality entry in both competitions and judge Mike Bennett had quite a job on his hands scoring the entries. Well, done to Dave Turner for first place in the Objects in the Air and Tony Gaskins for first place in the Open. All the results are on our website. This week, Wednesday 30th September, our speaker will be Lee Dixon from Cleethorpes Camera Club showing us his natural history, Creative and many other photographs he has taken. It will be the first time Lee has shown his photographs at our club. If anyone else wants to enter PDI's in the 2027 N&EMPF Exhibition, the deadline is this Wednesday at midnight. Harry is still taking entries for the PDI competition, with the categories of "Local Straight from Camera" (unedited .jpg), and "Open", to be held on Wednesday 7th October. Regards Graham
At the meeting last night Mike Bennett judged our competition with the categories of “Objects in the Air”, and “Open”. The standard of entries was excellent, and it gave Mike a tough task of judging the images, Mike gave some very good critique of the images displayed, the feedback helps members to develop compositional skills. Dave Turner was awarded first place for his image of the “Tiger Club Display Team” in the “Objects in the Air” category. Tony Gaskins was awarded first place for his image of the “Spectacular Rustgill” in the “Open” category.
Good Morning All, Last week at the club we watched the N&EMPF PDI Exhibition for 2026, it was a very good evening viewing very high standard images from all over the East Midlands. Dave Turner and I did manage to get images accepted; there is a full report on our website. This week, Wednesday 23rd September, we will hold our monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open", please send entries to Harry by midnight tonight. Harry is also accepting images for the PDI competition, with the categories of "Local Straight out of the Camera (only resizing permitted)" and "Open". Regards Graham
Members were shown the 2026 N&EMPF PDI Exhibition video last night with all of the accepted PDI images in the first part, and after the break the awarded PDI images. There were some stunning images on view, and Louth was successful in having 3 PDI images accepted, Graham Harrison with his image of a Stonechat, and Dave Turner with his portrait of Paul Rudd, and his monochrome image of Kings Cross railway station "Going Down". Overall it was a good inspirational evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club members had 15 minutes to show what they had done over the summer. It was a very interesting evening with eight members taking part. There were many locations on show and as usual some excellent photography. There is a full report on our blog. This week, Wednesday 16th September, we will be showing the N&EMPF exhibition, this is part one showing all the PDI's that were accepted. This is the highest standard of photography we as individuals take part in as a club. Members sent around 50 entries but only 3 were accepted. If you are inspired to enter the 2027 Exhibition after seeing the show, I send the clubs entries and I can give you more information. Closing date is the end of September. The Maximum size for N&EMPF is 1600 x 1200 3MB sRGB Harry is still taking entries for the monthly PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". Harry did ask about what can be accepted, and we couldn't really say as long as it's an object in the Air. The best way is to look up the definition of an object first. Harry is also accepting entries for the Local and Open competition in October. Robin is going to judge the Open competition, does anyone fancy judging the "Straight from the camera" category? Regards Graham
The Louth Photographic Society has returned after the summer break. It was an incredible return, with members providing us with some stunning images from over the summer break. A full, and varied smorgasbord of well executed photos, many of us visited Whitby, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and further north images from Staithes, and Sandbanks. Tony showed us his long exposure minimalist calming coastal scenes, from the Lincolnshire coast, and Whitby.. Chris brought us some beautiful photos taken of local churches, many of which many of us have never seen. Now I’ve never really seen the attraction of an expensive Leica camera, but when Mark showed his photos from his visit to the German Leica factory in Wetzlar, I now understand, camera bodies, and lenses milled from solid blocks of aluminium, hand polished, hand finished lens glass, and textured leather applied to the camera body, not a robot in sight, just craftsmen, and women making a superb photographic instrument. Sue brought us “pink” ladies driving tractors to raise money for cancer research. Last but definitely not least Richard showed his monochrome, and infrared images of trees, his compositions, and photographic eye bring these tree studies to life, we appreciate them even if some judges don’t understand. Many thanks to all of those members who contributed.
Good Morning All We spent last week on the Isle of Wight visiting many of the attractions. This week, Wednesday 9th September, we are back at the club with 15-minute PDI shows of what you did during the summer break, I have Derek Smith, Tony Gaskins, Harry Kerman, Chris Birchmore and Richard Hildred on the list, if I have missed you off, please let me know. I should be there but could be late as away playing golf. Harry is taking entries for the September PDI competition, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". Harry will miss the October local competition but will sort the entries out for us, The competition categories will be "Local-Not Edited" and "Open". We judge this competition in house so could do with two volunteers to judge. The local competition is a .jpeg photograph taken and straight from the camera, no cropping, or post processing etc, like the old days taken no more than 25 miles from St James church. Regards Graham
