Right now, at least for this type of shooting I was doing, I was going more for subtle editing. However, I'm new to both photography and editing. I've set my Rebel T7 to shoot both high-def JPG and RAW because some pictures I've taken I haven't wanted to touch up a lot for one reason or another.
I'm dipping back into editing, and was hoping for some input into shooting tips and editing the photos.
This is the JPG the camera generated.
This was my first RAW edit. Untouched white balance with increased saturation, vibrancy, and a little noise reduction.
This is the next RAW edit where I allowed an auto adjustment of the white balance (The lighting was 2pm in Beverly Hills, if that adds context) and actually used less noise reduction.
Thank you in advance. I know these pictures aren't very good, but I know I gotta keep working at it if I ever wanna get any better.
What software do you use ?
I recommend Darktable (it may be a little intimidating at first but youtube has a shit ton of good tutorials)
In darktable there are many ways to achieve the same result
Take a look at this: https://avidandrew.com/darktable-scene-referred-workflow.html
And these tutorials for beginners : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt6U6IJ2myOToBFeVL-EaXA <-- amazing quality, concise
Oh and the most important thing, I can't stress this enough: learn masks and ESPECIALLY Dodge & Burning
D&B tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFTA7ovTrzQ <-- ๐
(Btw this guy is great)
I hope you'll post you next pictures !
I use a fork of rawtherapee called ART. It just changes the UI around a bit.
I only tried Darktable once. I loaded up a beach shot, and the RAW file had a lot of colors that looked so wildly different from the cameras preview (I know that the preview has its own process for displaying images) that following troubleshooting tips I searched for weren't able to completely correct how it looked. It was a very violet-tinged sunset. ART typically started somewhere infelt more comfortable working from. I'm sure I could give it another shot.
Yeah, darktable prides itself on having the bare minimum amount of base processing (and you can even revert those by clicking around in the "history" tab)
I can give you a good starting preset if you want, then you can use very powerful tools such as color balance rgb or color zones to tweak them to your liking
I promise I'm not paid by Big Darktable xD
Sure, I'll take any help I can get!