7 Terrible Landscape EDITING MISTAKES

in this video i will show seven common landscape photography editing mistakes that you definitely want to avoid when i talk about mistakes i mean unwarranted mistakes so on the one hand you have your own style which i of course respect but on the other hand you have all those mistakes that you cannot hide behind this is my art and i want to edit the photos the way i please so these mistakes are very common it is some i see a lot when i browse through photos either on facebook or instagram however i always show my own photos in these videos so i wanted to mix it up a little bit through my post processing course i also have a facebook group and i asked the members to submit photos that they wanted to get a little bit of feedback on so i got more than 100 photos and i've crammed all those photos down to these seven common landscape photography editing mistakes that you want to avoid so before we get into it be sure to hit the like button subscribe if you want to see even more videos and hit the bell notification and select all to see all my videos so that youtube does not select the videos for you so without further ado let's get into the first mistake i'm of course going to show how to fix these mistakes and i'm going to do it in adobe photoshop and adobe camera roll if you're using lightroom or any other program you can of course also follow along they are kind of the same and you kind of end up doing the same mistakes in editing no matter the program so let's get into it so the first mistake is to not get rid of all the essential small mistakes such as screwed horizons which is the case in this one so we'll just go in and fix it here you just go to the crop and rotate tab and then the straighten tool and just click somewhere along what's perceived as the horizon there we go very easy fix the same is in the case in this one beautiful shot from iceland so let's just fix the horizon like this and now we have a pretty good horizon another thing that is really really important to fix is dust spots so you can see here these are sensor dust spots and here and here that's a rather easy way to fix it and we have another example here with even more sensor dust spots so you just go into the spot removal tool you can either press on the visual spot and it doesn't really work that well in this example here if we go back to the other example we can see it better they are always these circles here and here however in this example where it doesn't really work with visualize spots we just go back into edit just crank up the dehaze and then we can really easily see these dust spots and then we can use the spot removal tool and just select them if these spots are in a place with a lot of texture it can be a little bit harder to use the spot removal tool so let's go into photoshop and finish up this one here instead so now that we're in photoshop we can just zoom into our dust spots and you can see we have one over here and we have something here so i just make a new layer and then i use my clone stamp tool at a relatively low flow and i'll just select a little bit from above there we go away with this one and away with this one and i know we also have one over here so we can just select a little bit there and just paint on top so that's a very simple way to also remove dustbots so the next mistake is to use two heavy vignettes so vignettes are usually something you want to avoid because it's an optical mistake in your lens you can use them artistically however if they become distracting they become a problem so in this first example here it's not too bad but if we zoom out we can actually really see that there is a lot of vignetting going on right here the same one in this example here it is it kind of looks unnatural because this is not how light would behave in reality and we can kind of like really easily see that it's a vignette same goes for this one here again it is just distractingly dark out here in the corners relative to the rest of the scene same goes for for this one here it's not so bad in this one and this one here it really comes across that there's a lot of vignetting here so what i mean is that the gradation from out here where it's dark to where it's bright is simply just too hard it it happens too sudden like this phenomenon you wouldn't see this in reality so be careful how you apply vignettes when you work with vignettes in photoshop or camera raw or lightroom you can of course go down here to turn on your use profiles corrections and then play around with the vignette here and i usually think that camera roll lightroom has a tendency to overcompensate a little bit so i can pull it back a little bit or you can go all the way down here to effects and then you can add some vignettes you can see here this is just it's way too much it looks super distracting it would never look like this in reality but if you really want to darken down those corners just use the feather tool down here i usually just crank it all the way up and then you can always put the midpoint further in if you want to respect the highlights you can use this highlight slider down here in that way you pull back the effect of the vignetting from the highlights so that is one way to soften up your vignettes but generally be very very careful that you don't overdo vignettes now probably the biggest mistake or problem i see in all editing modern editing digital editing is halos and yeah white lines around high contrast areas you can see here along these poles there's this white line going all the way up it almost looks like chromatic aberration and in this example two here when we zoom in you can see white lines along these poles here and when we zoom in here this is almost this is like overly processed but it's a good example here because we can really see along this church tower here just white lines whoops along all these towers so be very very careful of that and werner i know that you can do a proper job here because you have this shot here with the tree and it's a really great example because usually trees can't be hard to edit and you have done it really really well here there's a little bit of haloing going on down here but it's not as bad as in the two former examples in this example here from boris be careful up here we have the foreground which is relatively bright and then suddenly it becomes dark and then we have the sky coming in and then we get all these halos along the trees so this is probably some kind of blending you have made where you have had a darker exposure and then maybe just put it in without using a proper luminosity mask of course show how to do that in my photoshop course so you might want to re-watch that one else for all of you who are not in my course i have a very brief very fast introduction to luminosity masks you can see via the link up in the corners here and you can see also here it's not too bad in this example here but we do have a little bit of haloing white haloing going on here in this example here we also have some haloing going on down here i don't know if it's some clarity that has been pushed up a little bit but it does look a little bit off along here and this one here if we really zoom out it becomes visible you can see it here along the rock right here it's not too bad but just be aware of it there is also the risk of making darker halos so you can see here around these two humans that there's this kind of dark halo shadow thing going on it happens sometimes when you process your photos really really hard which is the case here with really hard contrast that those pop you can always compensate for it by just painting in a little bit brighter so let's zoom in here and just paint in a little bit brighter around them it's very simple to compensate for so before and after you see it's almost gone so these halos usually happen if you just like crank up the shadows bring down the highlights and let's just bring some exposure in and some contrast maybe a little bit of clarity so it's not too bad in this example but you can't see that up here along the church tower it's a little bit darker and around and if we zoom in we start getting this white line here along the tower and if we increase some sharpening you can really see it so generally be very very careful of that and use luminosity masking this is where you want to use luminosity masking it is to avoid these hdr effects so the easiest way to fix these very grim white lines along buildings and poles and generally high contrast areas is simply to get into photoshop where i am right now so just make a new layer change the blending mode to darken go to your clone stamp tool you can take the flow up to a hundred percent and just select hold down alt select a little bit outside of wherever you want to remove the halo or the line and just paint on top of it so in that way we are only painting due to the darken blending mode of the layer where the photo is brighter which is of course the line so that is the easiest way to do it make sure that you are a little bit careful that you don't darken down more than you actually want to darken down but generally this is the easiest way to fix this so the next mistake is that you do not respect the light and the sky is simply just too dark compared to the foreground so in this first example here we can see that the sky that is your light source and then suddenly it becomes dark here along the top of the mountains and then it becomes brighter again down here and of course there can be some mist and some fog that's all good but this here looks like a typical gradient filter either from a gradient filter on your camera or in lightroom and if i just go in and try to compensate for it you can see it starts to look much more natural the gradation from the sky and down to the ground what you probably would want to do is darken down the shadows a little bit here maybe darken down the overall highlights and then bring in a little bit of contrast and then maybe only apply a little bit of lower exposure to the upper sky something like this here in that way you get around this really hard gradation which it looks like a gradient filter this example here so again we can see how the sky is just darker than what's reflected in it here just remember that generally when we have reflections of something the reflection is usually always the darker part of the photo so you really need to take that into consideration when you darken down the sky and there's a reflection it is the same in in this example here we have a very dark sky but the reflection is brighter that's not how it looks in reality so in this photo here from lars we have our light source here in the background and our light source should always be the brightest part of the photo and it arguably is but the problem is we certainly have a very very bright part right here in the middle which is like mainly wider or colder than our light source and that looks a little bit unnatural so generally you cannot have your main light source to be darker gr the ground which is it is lighting up that doesn't make any sense so you have to respect the light in that regard in this example here from nick really really great example here he respects the light so even though it is probably has a bit of processing to it at least a lot of contrast we have our light source here in the background it is not crammed in there's a nice gradation from the blown out highlights which is fine you're more than welcome to blow out highlights but from here where the sun is and then into the yellows here and and around and even here in the rocks it's blown out but it's fine it looks natural and then we have the main light hitting here in the foreground the only one thing i i would suggest is maybe just like a a crop but yeah something like this here because then we get rid of most of that sky that doesn't really add too much but besides that beautiful photonic so the next mistake i often see is that the photographer does not get the tones right in editing here and talking about either to flat photo a too contrasty photo and it can be blown out highlights or it can be clipped shadows or maybe some wrong dodge and burning that again does not respect the light in this photo here a beautiful morning i would suggest to just give it some contrast i can bring down the darks a little bit here and and maybe bring up the whites so in in this way we we see a little bit more of the texture so this here i would say was too flat initially here in this example also a little bit too flat here in the foreground so just make a simple gradient filter bring in some contrast to the foreground in that way we also make the path stand out a little bit more it's not a whole lot it does but as you can see it looks a little bit more natural like this here the waterfall here and they can be notoriously hard to get right but it is a little bit blown out and i can't really restore it because it's a jpeg file but just really be careful of these blown out highlights up here in the clouds also it seems as if they're blown out there's not really any details up there if you you obviously have the raw file you can bring it down a little bit up there and here in the background there are some details here but they are just about being blown out i would like those details to be there too so obviously you can like use a radial filter or whatever bring down the exposure a little bit and just add it in there so in that way we can see a little bit more of the details in this very high contrast example here and generally a high contrast like it is a certain style and of course you can blow out the highlights and and clip the shadows just be aware if that is actually what you want because you are losing a lot of details in the shadows and in the highlights here so maybe not that much contrast but then again it's very subjective this is here where it's like personal style over editing mistakes in this example here we have our light source here we know the sun is somewhere up here it's not out here over the ocean so down here on the house it is certainly brighter on the back side yet over here it's darker so there's some kind of dodging which doesn't really look natural so be very careful of dodging and burning so it gets to look natural what i would do here to fix it is just to bring down the exposure a little bit and there we go so now it looks a little bit more natural then i would bring up the shadows of the entire photo in another way use some luminosity masking and stuff because we really do not want our photos to look unnatural and in this example here from sandros again it's all about respecting that light we have very very hard vignetting and the vignetting is actually making the sun darker and the sun is obviously the most bright light source we have but the sun is darker than the light over here we cannot have that i know sandro this is one of your bad edits you said so yourself but it's a great example that the light source and the tones are not respected so this example here also from you sandra's it's actually not too bad even though you see it's one of your bad edits it's maybe just a little bit underexposed a little bit too dark if you just bring up the exposure you're fine and this one here is not as bad as you think it is and here i can't really point to anything maybe it looks like a little bit of a crooked horizon but generally this is a really nicely edited in regard to tones and so forth nice contrast so the sixth mistake i often see is that a photo is not cleaned properly so all these small distractions down here i probably wouldn't get rid of all of them but just most of them in this case here it's a beautiful photo but my eyes are just brought down here in the corner just get rid of this distraction here you can do it in photoshop with any kind of cleaning tool and in this one up here whoopsie i think you forgot something up here in the corner probably some electricity line power line or something like that but besides that really really beautiful photo so the last mistake is just wrong colors over saturation and hdr-ish effects so the first example here we have some purple colors here in in the shadows and and the general feelings for is very high contrast and it just looks yeah over the top uh it it it's in my humble opinion not really aesthetic so really be careful of these purple colors here in the shadows in this example here is just overly processed in regard to clarity it looks to me and contrast it gets that hdr feeling it can be a style fair enough but you take out a lot of the natural parts of the photo so i would personally really pool all of these sliders back here can add a little bit of contrast but a little bit too much dehazing i know what you're going for i know you want to show all these beautiful light streaks coming out from behind the cloud but there are other ways to do that be very very careful that that you don't overuse the deha slider and the clarity slider because it just makes the photo look hdrs and and very unnatural so in this last example here um way too many colors way too saturated colors you there's probably a market for it but i would definitely pull back the saturation slider a lot like it stones like this it's just too much too red it's too blue looks super unnatural it almost looks like luminosity plankton but i guess this is taken at like sunset so definitely pull that saturation slider way back and yeah i'm not sure what more can can really be done here it's just too too hard out with the dehaze yeah so really really over over saturated be careful not to add too many colors so this was of course only a small selection of those hundred photos that i got in the folder and admittedly most of those photos were really really good great work guys these were just the very worst examples that i could find and you have probably edited these photos before you started my course i most certainly hope so so if some of you guys out there haven't enrolled in my photoshop for landscape photographers course and learn how i edit my photos then there is a discount quote down in description 15 off that you can use and until next time i would highly appreciate both a like and a comment and i hope you all learned something from these seven examples

Channel: Mads Peter Iversen

Views: 61,132

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, landscape photography tips, photography mistakes, photography tips, landscape photography mistakes, landscape photography editing, improve your photography, photography tips for beginners, beginner photography mistakes, editing mistakes, lightroom mistakes, photoshop mistakes, 7 editing mistakes, 7 editing tips, adobe cameraraw, adobe photoshop tutorial, adobe photoshop, photoshop editing mistakes, lightroom editing mistakes

Id: 0qVgoEXr35U

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021