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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A PDI (Projected Digital Image) competition was held last night with the categories of "Architectural Detail", and "Open". Martyn Wrigg was our judge for the evening, and he competently judged the submitted images, although he diid surprise with some of his choices of placing, but that's a judges perogative. Martyn complemented members on the quality of the images presented, which had made some of his decisions difficult. First placed was "It's a Fixer Upper" in the Architectural Detail section, and "Dervish Musician" in the Open section. Congratulations to Robin Begley, who as one of our newest members submitted some impressive images, achieving a 3rd place in "Architectural Details", and 2nd in the "Open" category. All the results are now posted to our website Competition page.
Good Morning All Last week at the club member Steve Chapman gave us an insight into his life and especially his time at Ilam Park in Derbyshire photographing for the National Trust. Steve showed us many photographs he had taken of the people involved with the trust and the Peak District. The second half was dedicated to Steve's own work, some superb aircraft photography as well as many other subjects. There is a report on the evening on our blog page. This week, Wednesday 11th March we are holding a PDI competition, with the categories of "Architectural Detail " and "Open" to be judged by Martyn Wrigg of Barton. The following week is a committee meeting for the committee members only on that evening. For newer members we have two committee meetings a year. Regards Graham
Last night Steve Chapman presented a selection of images from his archives. Steve had previously been a volunteer photographer for the National Trust, and he showed many photos from the Ilam Park Estate, Dovedale, it was interesting to see some of the "behind the scenes" photos. The Jacobite reenactment battle scenes were amazing, the uniforms showed great attention to detail, and there were some real characters among the reenactors. After the break Steve showed some of his general photography, he has a great photographic eye, as some of his photos showed with different colours, shapes, and leading lines. Steve has taken many photos of agricultural machinery, and risked life and limb to create some close up aircraft photos. For atmosphere, just look at these horseriders at the top of the hill on a cool early morning. For heartstopping imagery look at these children on the side of a building, the children are photos on the side of the building, however, Steve wasted no time in capturing this stunning image. Many thanks to Steve for a fascinating evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club I gave you a PDI (Projected Digital Image) presentation showing photographs I had taken on my travels last year, following up with some past and present photographs of Binbrook. I hope you all enjoyed the evening and maybe saw parts of England you hadn't seen before. This week, Wednesday 4th March, our member Steve Chapman will be showing us photographs he has taken. This is Steve's first time showing the club his work so will be a very good night. Harry is now accepting your PDI's for the next competition, with the categories of "Architectural Detail" and "Open". The closing date is Friday 6th March. Regards Graham
The N&EMPF Exhibition will be on display in Cleethorpes from 3rd March.
It was "President's Night" with Graham Harrison showing some of his images from short breaks, and holidays around the UK. Graham rented a holiday cottage in Newbiggin, Northumberland, and showed many of his photos from that area, including a visit to Lindisfarne, where the castle on the rocky outcrop made for an impressive photo. In Suffolk, Graham visited Pakefield, and photographed the colourful beach huts at the top of the shingle beach, he also showed several photos from the Lake District. One of my favourite photos from last night was St. Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay, with the groins in juxtaposition. Thank you Graham for a very interesting evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club Harry and Chris gave us an insight into how our exhibition preparation is going, we have a lot of historical photos to go on show and there may be room for some more up to date ones but Harry and Chris will see how much room we have left when they start putting it all together at the museum. I also took the time to find out what you wanted in the new program, filling in the competition subjects and outings. This week, Wednesday 25th February, it is the Presidents night, so that's my night and I will be showing you what I got up to in 2025. The rainbow at Brough castle gives you idea of one area I visited. Harry is now accepting entries for the next PDI competition, with the categories of "Architectural Detail" and "Open". The new program is nearly done and to give you a chance to get ready for the first two competitions in May and June the subjects are May, PDI comp - Landscapes with water and Open and June, Print competition, Trees and Open. Regards Graham
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our Print Of The Year (POTY) competition, it's one of our highlights of the year and judged by Grahame Dunkin, it proved to be an excellent night with some very good prints on show. The results are on our website under competitions but the highlights were Dave Turner being placed first in the Pictorial, landscape and best Mono print in show; Robin Begley, First in the Record section, Keith Rossington first place in Portrait, Harry Kerman first in the photo/journalism (including Street) and myself taking first place in the Nature as well as overall Print of the Year. My photograph of a Hairy Shield bug was taken at Chambers wood on a camera club outing. This week, Wednesday 19th February, we are sorting out Prints for our 70th anniversary exhibition at Louth Museum. Please bring along any local prints you may have and maybe a few further afield for selection. Please also bring along any prints you may have that you think will be ok for the LPA Foster challenge and LPA Battles. They need to be mounted on a 500mm x 400mm mount and a maximum print size of A3. Don't forget to take a photograph of water if you are doing this years project, no real excuses at the moment. Regards Graham
Our highlight competition, Print Of The Year (POTY) competition was held last night, with our judge Grahame Dunkin giving his experienced critique on the excellent images submitted. Congratulations to Dave Turner for his Monochrome image of the year: West Pier Watchtower - Whitby, and Graham Harrison for his Colour image: Hairy Shield Bug.
