A introduction to editing photos (help!)
Discussion
Having just got into DSLR photography, and started to shoot in RAW, I think I need some pointers on how to edit photos. I have seen quite a few people on here refer to curves and basic tweeking but I have no clue what to actually do. I have used the clone tool to get rid of lampposts etc but that is about all I can do, as far as changing colour levels/brightness etc I have no clue.
I guess a few people might be in the same boat. So over to the bastions of this forum who produce great photos time and time again. What should we do in our photo editing programs???
(I'm using aperture but I guess you can apply most stuff to lightroom and photoshop as well?)
I guess a few people might be in the same boat. So over to the bastions of this forum who produce great photos time and time again. What should we do in our photo editing programs???
(I'm using aperture but I guess you can apply most stuff to lightroom and photoshop as well?)
A few basics (at least, these are my first steps). I use Lightroom, so I don't know how (or if) any of these steps relate to Aperture.
1) GET THE WHITE BALANCE RIGHT! There should be some way of adjusting the white balance - an "auto" button or various presets for different lighting types (usually a reasonable starting point), a pair of sliders for temperature and tint (fiendish) or maybe a dropper tool that allows you to select what should be a neutral grey (not black or white, they give inaccurate results).
2) Adjust the white point. (Not the same as white balance. White point is essentially the maximum brightness pixels in your image, the ones that should be white.) I assume that aperture has a histogram display: adjust the exposure so that a) the histogram has a decent spread of values to the right and b) the picture still looks OK. (A picture that's meant to be dark won't have an even spread across the whole histogram.) Watch for highlight clipping, though. A small amount may be recoverable with RAW images (Lightroom has a "Recovery" slider for this purpose).
3) Adjust the black point. In Lightroom, there's a slider labelled "Blacks" that helps spread the histogram to the left. I usually try to arrange it so that I'm just getting a bit of clipping in the blacks.
From there, you can fine tune using "Fill light", "Brightness" and "Contrast".
Something I discovered a while ago, that had confused me for ages: the difference between "Exposure" and "Brightness". (Again, this applies to Lightroom, it may or may not apply to your particular package, but I would think it does.)
Adjusting the exposure moves the whole histogram right or left - specifically, it's used to set the brightness of the brightest pixels. Adjusting the brightness shifts the histogram around, but doesn't move the white and black points, so it can be used to change the overall brightness, but within those limits. Increasing the contrast sort of "pushes" the histogram down in the middle, so it tends to flatten out a build up at the extremes, whilst decreasing it pulls it up in the middle.
Obviously, the above is all a bit simplified, and the interactions are more complex than that, but it should give you a starting point to play about with and experiment.
1) GET THE WHITE BALANCE RIGHT! There should be some way of adjusting the white balance - an "auto" button or various presets for different lighting types (usually a reasonable starting point), a pair of sliders for temperature and tint (fiendish) or maybe a dropper tool that allows you to select what should be a neutral grey (not black or white, they give inaccurate results).
2) Adjust the white point. (Not the same as white balance. White point is essentially the maximum brightness pixels in your image, the ones that should be white.) I assume that aperture has a histogram display: adjust the exposure so that a) the histogram has a decent spread of values to the right and b) the picture still looks OK. (A picture that's meant to be dark won't have an even spread across the whole histogram.) Watch for highlight clipping, though. A small amount may be recoverable with RAW images (Lightroom has a "Recovery" slider for this purpose).
3) Adjust the black point. In Lightroom, there's a slider labelled "Blacks" that helps spread the histogram to the left. I usually try to arrange it so that I'm just getting a bit of clipping in the blacks.
From there, you can fine tune using "Fill light", "Brightness" and "Contrast".
Something I discovered a while ago, that had confused me for ages: the difference between "Exposure" and "Brightness". (Again, this applies to Lightroom, it may or may not apply to your particular package, but I would think it does.)
Adjusting the exposure moves the whole histogram right or left - specifically, it's used to set the brightness of the brightest pixels. Adjusting the brightness shifts the histogram around, but doesn't move the white and black points, so it can be used to change the overall brightness, but within those limits. Increasing the contrast sort of "pushes" the histogram down in the middle, so it tends to flatten out a build up at the extremes, whilst decreasing it pulls it up in the middle.
Obviously, the above is all a bit simplified, and the interactions are more complex than that, but it should give you a starting point to play about with and experiment.
Best thing to do - play. Adjust everything in isolation to see what it does. There's a few aperture guides on the Apple website, but I just prefer to play. Once you get an idea of the effect each thing has, start to apply that knowledge to try to get what you want. After a while you'll build up a few standard adjustments that you do each time (adjusting white and black point for example).
Never be afraid to play, as to undo, just uncheck the editing type. All aperture edits are non-destructive so no harm in playing. One good trick is to duplicate first to compare tweaks to the original, or two different types of tweak.
Play, play, play. its the only way.
Never be afraid to play, as to undo, just uncheck the editing type. All aperture edits are non-destructive so no harm in playing. One good trick is to duplicate first to compare tweaks to the original, or two different types of tweak.
Play, play, play. its the only way.
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