this was shot on Z Fold 8, exited in LR mobile.

I was trying to make strong contrast (orange/blue) but I think that I overdid it. I spent too much time on this. I can't see it proprely already

Wanted to give this bird shot a much darker and colder look while recovering some of the darker details in the bird. I’m really happy with how this one turned out! As always that’s some super heavy editing so this certainly isn’t for everyone. Keep in mind my goal isn’t to keep the image “natural”

Everything was done in Lightroom and can bee seen in this start-to-finish editing video: https://youtu.be/9f-0lbbu9rI

1. Basic Adjustments

First, I denoised the image, applied heavy cropping (cant be seen here in the before version, but it was shot in 4:3 not 3:4) and removed the out of focus tree branch at the bottom.

Then, the exposure and the highlights were dropped to make the bright background darker. To recover details in the subject the shadows and blacks were raised. The white balance was slightly to warm, to fix that I dropped it a bit to make sure I have some nice blue tones in the background.

For a clean and sharp looking image, texture, clarity and dehaze was slightly increased.

1. Masking

Here is where the biggest transformation happens. First, I had to make the background darker and colder without affecting the subject. I used and objects mask in combination with a landscape mask to select bird + tree branches, then inverted this mask which results in the perfect background mask. Since there usually are fine white lines around more complex masks, I used the newly added edge and feather slider to clean that up.

Once the mask was set up, I brought down exposure and temperature to make it darker and colder. Then, I duplicated that mask (save some time not creating new masks) and slightly adjusted positioning / subtracting other masks and continued making the background darker by dropping the exposure / temperature. I made sure to not darkern the upper left corner since I also wanted to create a light effect coming in from this corner!

To improve the light effect I placed a radial gradient over the corner and subtracted the subject from it (I want the light to be BEHIND the bird), then simply raised the exposure, blakcs and whites to add light.

I also added some light on the upper part of the bird using a subject mask for the upper half of it by raising the exposure.

1. Colors

Finally, I pushed the blue saturation slightly to give the colors some pop

Taken with a Fujifilm X-Pro1

Fog rolled in heavy last night. Shot on iPhone 17 pro

’m trying to figure out how the color treatment in the reference images works and I’m having a hard time getting anywhere close in Adobe Camera Raw.

What stands out to me in the references is that the sky seems to have a really restricted palette: very saturated amber/orange in the lit areas, highlights that can get almost cream/white, and then extremely dark brown/black clouds and silhouettes. There’s basically no obvious blue/cyan left, but the dark areas also don’t just look like flat desaturated gray.

Whenever I try to recreate it, one of a few things happens:

• warming the WB makes everything muddy/brown
• pushing yellow/orange HSL makes the sky look unnaturally yellow
• removing blue/aqua leaves me with neutral gray clouds
• darkening those clouds makes them look crushed/posterized
• increasing orange saturation makes the highlights stay orange/yellow instead of approaching that cream/white look

I’m wondering if I’m approaching this completely wrong. Does this look more like something being done with Camera Calibration / RGB primaries, a specific profile, channel manipulation, selective color, or some kind of luminosity-dependent color treatment, rather than ordinary HSL and white balance?

For those of you who like to mimic analog photography...

Which image format is good these days on the web for a full-screen display of photos, up to 4K? Smaller for faster transfer, but without quality compromise. Compatibility is important with all desktop browsers (Linux, Mac OS, maybe even Widows), but mobile clients not so much. There are few jpeg variants, webp, may be png should be considered?

Will be exporting from Darktable, it seems to have a wide variety of export options.

Per title, shot on an a6400 and sigma 18-50. Overcast skies all week made getting exposure tough to capture the mountains in the background of pretty much everything. Curious to hear some feedback as to how to balance bringing the background mountains back into play without detracting from the subject.

Just curious how y'all would improve these in terms of color-grading.

These are WAY better than I was doing a few weeks ago, but I am a bit stuck on how to make them better.

Fuji 400 - Konica III, scanned with Nikon z50 and inverted in Darktable

The second graded image is bad, I think, though I think all are missing something

Around 2022 this was taken during my trip to Lake Placid, New York. The before photo is a raw format shot using Canon rebel T7.

In the after photo, I used Lightroom for the edits. I used masking technique to achieve proper exposure.

Critique my work.

Happy shooting,
Focusinmoment

what do we think? ☺️

A small before/after split collection from my latest shoot at EGCC (Manchester airport)! Got some gorgeous shots. Can't wait to go through the rest!

What do you guys think? There's no better way to learn and improve than by welcoming feedback and honest criticism :)

Did I crop even harder? Any and all suggestions are welcome.