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
When we see a photograph what do we actually see? Does the image grab our attention? Does the image tell a story, or do we have to fill in the blanks with our own memories, and experiences? If we see a complete picture, or just a detail, which stirs our emotions most? At a recent competition a print was shown of fishing boats pulled up on the beach at North Landing, Flamborough, it was an excellent print, but the judge remarked “it’s just boats on a beach”. Do we feel the same emotion with a “normal” view, or do we want more, a storm raging, or fishermen launching the boats? Anyway, here are a few of my “abnormal” photos, first up a rusted bolt, you see I ask “who put that there?”, “what did it once hold?” Second, a vehicle excise disc, surely that stirs memories? Thirdly, a stone carved column, who carved the details? Was it shaped according to an architect’s brief, or a stone masons pattern? What emotions were felt by the stone mason? Lastly, a door handle. Where does this lead? How old is it, and how many hands have opened this door? Finally, I think that I’ve got my “mojo” back, I’ve been out more with my camera, and enjoying the experience, and surely that’s what photography is all about, the joy of capturing an image that pleases me.
The Exhibition will be in place from 10th - 29th September 2026
I was scrolling through the archives yesterday, and found these "Still Life" images. Still Life is an interesting photographic genre that requires good lighting, and compositional skills, but the results can be amazing. Here are four images of the genre, "Breakfast" showing cereal falling into a bowl, "Four Candles" (no not the ones from the Two Ronnies sketch), the moody "Decaying Tulip", and the simple but effective monochrome "Opener". Perhaps these images might give you some inspiration.
I joined the NELPS outing at Chambers Farm Woods on Wednesday. The NELPS visit to Chamber Farm wood and butterfly garden was well attended, with several members from NELPS, Grimsby, Dunholme and Louth, kind thanks to all that came, although it was very hot the butterfly garden, being rather full and slightly unkept did not let us down with butterflies, two less common were seen, a Comma butterfly and a humming bird moth, with loads of very lively common blue butterflies. Most of the insects in the butterfly garden were highly active, and by the time an insect was spotted, it was off!! I managed to just about get an image of the Comma butterfly, and nobody stood a chance with the humming bird moth, it was too fast. The dragonfly was more accommodating remaining fairly still posing for us. The next NELPS outing will be to the Peoples Park in Grimsby on Wednesday 19th, I'm busy on that day, but I will be attending the meeting at the Sandtoft Trolleybus Museum on Wednesday 26th. Many thanks to NELPS for organising these outings, it was a thoroughly pleasurable morning.
A visit to Whitby for a sunset picture didn't quite go to plan. Unknown to me today is the last day of the Whitby Regatta. Whitby in the summer is usually busy, but today it rivaled Time Square in New York. My planned shoot of the East Pier was a non-starter because for tonight only there's a fun fair along West Pier where I planned to shoot from. I had to re-think and resort to plan b, which was also a non-starter because the East Pier was closed as it was packed with fireworks. Plan c was OK though and I got an image I'm pleased with.
I've been up to RSPB Bempton Cliffs this week, and have taken some excellent photographs, the weather was fine, and the lighting was less harsh than usual. This pair were on the cliff top, obviously well established, and saw off this interloper trying to muscle in on their space, those beaks look very vicious. I hope that everyone else is having a productive summer break.
For club interaction, we are invited to these NELPS photo shoots. So lets start this club interaction, NELPS are now on there summer break, but it does not stop there. The NELPS club president has put together some outdoor photo shoots:- Lincoln 5th Aug meet at the Cathedral 11am Not forgetting the photo exhibition by Lincoln Camera Club in the Usher Gallery! Chambers Farm Wood & Butterfly Farm 12th Aug meet at 10am. Peoples Park Grimsby 19th Aug meet at 10am. Trolley Bus Museum Sandtoft 26th Aug meet at 10am Cadwell Park 10th Aug motorbikes, 24th Aug cars and both are track days so free to get in.
Sutton & Trusthorpe Camera Club have their annual Exhibition at the Meridale Hall, Sutton on Sea, on 29th / 30th August. Drink and a Home-made cake only £3!
I’ve lost my photographic “mojo”, that desire to go out and take impactful photographs. That creative spark has gone, vanished, will it ever return? Writers talk of a “writers block”, when they just sit in front of a blank page, and can’t think of anything else to write, I’m the same, still out with my camera, but just not creating anything meaningful. Some of this I suppose is due to the fact that I’ve almost stopped my genre of model photography, we had the Studio evening, and other than that I’ve only had 2 model shoots this year. So what is my photography genre now? I know that I’m not a bird photographer, I haven’t got the patience to sit in a bird hide for hours with a long lens, waiting for the right bird shot to appear. Landscape, possibly, but I look at the work of some of our members, and YouTube videos, and don’t know whether I can achieve as good a standard in my work? I do enjoy macro photography, but again do my photos reach a good standard? One way forward is to look at our Societies annual project, this year it’s “water” one photo a month depicting water. Then of course there are the planned photo competitions for the rest of the year, those subjects could inspire me to go out and take some images. Anyway, that’s me, enjoy the rest of the summer, and if any of our members could share a photo, with a line or two of text I will be very happy to post on this blog.
Good Morning All Last week we had a very good evening at Kirkby Gravel Pits, it was a warm sunny evening and there was wildlife about to photograph. There were Dragonflies about, but all flying, but we did manage to photograph some Damselflies and grasshoppers etc. We then called at the local pub in Kirkby on Bain for refreshments. There were only 7 of us, if you have other ideas for outings please let me know and I will look into them for next year. Derek has also done a blog on the evening. Louth did make it through to the LPA Battle finals coming fifth overall, the final is on the 18 th October at Nettleham village hall. That was the last event before the summer break, so we now have a break before returning in September. I won't be doing any newsletters unless there is something to report. If you do anything interesting over the break you can always send Derek a blog for our website. There are things you can do over the break, the monthly project of water, preparing for the PDI competition in September, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". In September our first meeting back will have members speaking on the topic "15 minutes on what you have done over the summer", you may want to prepare something for this. Have a good summer, Graham
