Editing your CREATIVE Wildlife Photography Images with Sabine on Adobe Lightroom.

hello and welcome to creative captures part two my name is sabine and today's episode is a follow-up on a video that i made a few weeks ago in which i explained several techniques on how to take creative wildlife photographs if you haven't watched that video yet i would strongly recommend you do so first by following the link in the top and then head back to this video where i will walk you through a typical edit of a high key a low key a silhouette and a pending shot step by step so that you can easily follow along so no time to waste let's get right into it before i get started i just want to mention that i'm gonna do all the editing with adobe lightroom if you have perhaps another post processing software don't switch off just yet i think that this video could still be helpful to you as most of the sliders really are very similar or identical in other softwares too all right let's hit it off with editing a typical high key image in my lightroom catalog i have a few zebra images from a recent photo safari in the beautiful masamara in kenya and if you look at these you can see that they are all overexposed purposely so for the high key effect we had a bit of overcast weather that day which we could use to our advantage and a fairly bright background behind the zebras exposing to the right by 3ev meant that we could get rid of most of the background but still keep enough visible detail on the zebra itself for the edit i will use this portrait because i like the side profile and i think the tail in motion gives this image a bit more interest over the others my personal way of editing high key images is pretty straightforward and almost the same every time i start with dragging the white slider to the right while holding down alt on a pc or the option key on a mac this gives me a good visualization of where in the image i've reached 100 percent white without any detail left i want most part of the background to become white and featureless and because of the black and white pattern of the zebra i can push the whites all the way up to plus one hundred hovering over the show highlight clipping feature will now show in a red color what has become 100 white and even though we have lost all detail in the white stripes of the zebra the black stripes which still contain enough detail create the separation we need to keep the zebra visible however if you had another animal like for example these hippos that have a uniform dark tone you will only drag the whites to the right until you see the first white speckles appear on the subject itself otherwise you would simply lose too much detail next i will basically do the same with the black slider because i have taken the image overexposed i now want to set the black point and bring some definition back into the black parts to do this i drag the black slider to the left this time while again holding down the alt or option key until i see the first black speckles appearing to define the edges on the animal a little more i take the highlight slider most of the time down to -100 after that i convert the image to black and white which is what i do with most of my high keys to give it that contemporary fine art feel and then i'll tweak it further from that the zebra still looks pretty washed out so i will take the black slider a bit more to the left this time solely looking at the outcome instead of using the masking feature then comes contrast and clarity there is absolutely no recipe here and you can drag them according to your own taste of course but see how especially the clarity slider brings out the texture and definition nicely i often have both sliders increased to values around plus 50 which can be a good starting point now having said that it depends a lot on the original image quality and the format you've taken the image in for these creative captures i would always recommend shooting in raw as you have much more data and detail to work with and as far as the high key is concerned keeping the iso as low as possible when you take the shot will help tremendously with the detail that you can bring out later in post a high iso photograph will unfortunately never give you the same detail and sharpness as a lower iso image after i've adjusted contrast and clarity i would like to make some more local adjustments to the zebra now this step very much depends on the situation and each image if the circumstances were absolutely perfect you might not even need it all together but in the case of the zebra although it was overcast weather there was a bit of a sun glare coming through the clouds which you can see in the areas around the ears the head and the back they lack this little bit of detail and to bring that back i use an adjustment brush with the exposure and highlights set to the minus side and then i'm going to brush only on these specific points to bring the detail back make sure to have the auto mask feature enabled so that you don't brush over the edges and by accident darken the background again and to control you can press o for overlay on your keyboard once you are done brushing to see if you need to do any cleanup if you do hold down alt on a pc or option on a mac to switch the brush from plus to minus and erase any mistakes now that the zebra looks pretty good i want to give a bit more attention to the background the first thing that grabs my attention is the dark area behind the tail which i found rather distracting and breaking the shape of the zebra if we look back at the original image you can see that this was simply a patch of green grass that was darker than the rest which is why it breaks the uniform bright background so simply using another adjustment brush with the exposure slider set to the plus side and painting over the dark area will get rid of the distraction as you can see now i've painted quite a bit over the tail and lost some of the dark areas there too but as long as the tail still looks like one i'm not fussed to be super accurate here i then evaluate the overall look once again and i might make minor tweaks like brighten the exposure a little as i personally like a bright and airy look and after that as a last checkup i use the spot removal tool and enable a feature called visualize spots with the strength set to 100 especially if you intend to make a print this is very useful as you can see now if there are any dark and distracting spots left in the background that aren't visible to your eye but could very well show up in a print later as with any image i added i do sharpening as a last step by masking the area i want to be sharpened and increasing the amount to my liking in this case to about 60. again this is very much image dependent the more pixels you have the more sharpening you can apply without having it look over sharpened now you can see side by side before and after while i do convert most high keys to black and white because of the natural lack of colors in the image because of the heavily over-exposing there are times when keeping them in color looks great especially with colorful birds you really want to bring out the beautiful tones if you're not sure you can always switch back between color and black and white right at the end and then decide which version you like best so what do you think i hope you like the edit if you do and you think this could make a beautiful print leave me a comment down below and give this video a thumbs up i'll thank you in advance and let's do a loki image for a low-key image i want to edit this null crocodile that was sunbathing on a tree lock in the chobe river and in camera i already underexposed and created with that a very dramatic contrast between the reptile having the sunshine on it from the side and a deep shadow of the riverbank on the other side and in the background all i want to do now in post is to further enhance this effect once again so let me start by cropping the image i think i will go for a vertical crop here just because i like the reflection and i want to include all of it plus this also lets me get rid of the lock on the right which i found a little bit distracting now i want to deepen the shadows further to create more drama and eliminate once again distractions that i can see in the background i will also deepen the blacks a bit but not too much as otherwise too much detail would be lost on the crocodile as well by hovering over the show shadow clipping feature you can always double check that you didn't go overboard meaning that you should try and avoid any blue color on your main subject since the crocodile skin is very reflective i need to check the highlights by holding down the alt option key and decreasing the highlight slider to the left until basically no more or only little of these bright speckles are visible next up i'm going to add a dark vignette around the corners of the image i usually go as far as most elements that are still visible in the background disappear and my eye is drawn right onto the crocodile itself with the vignette the outer edge of the croc also went darker and perhaps a little bit too dark to fix that i use an adjustment brush with a bit of plus exposure and brush over the parts that i want to be brighter right underneath the crocs chin i would like to add a bit of darker exposure so i grab another brush and darken just that area heading over to the contrast slider there's really no standard here and i usually use it in either direction as i see fit because this photograph already has a dark and very moody feel to it i do not really want to increase more contrast and make it super grungy looking instead i actually slightly decrease the contrast if i look at the general color tone i found that the image has a bit of a green tint to it so i'm going to pull the tint slider a bit over to the magenta side and i feel that i also want it a bit warmer in the color temperature to bring out some more detail and texture in both the crocodile and the tree i increase clarity and since i found whenever i use clarity the overall look gets a little darker again i will now use a radial filter over the main focal point in the image and increase the exposure again slightly although the crocodile is brighter now i feel that the eye and teeth could do with a little more and therefore i use an adjustment brush with a preset called iris enhance which is native in lightroom actually and this lets the eye and sharp teeth pop a bit more and to make the effect more subtle i dial down the saturation and the exposure a bit but i do increase the vibrance slider for the entire image to bring in a little color and then same as in the high key edit i will now double check my background for any unwanted speckles that might not be visible to my eye to do this i use once again the spot removal tool with the visualize spots feature enabled now i can see where i might need to brush a bit more darker exposure or use the spot removal function to clean up the background that looks good i think so let's mask and sharpen and here you can see the before and after of course there is many low-key techniques as i covered in my previous video but it would be a bit time consuming going through all of them now i think you got the basic idea it is just a bit more tweaking here and there if you have a different technique and in the end it is the kind of look that you want to go for so let's rather continue with a typical silhouette edit silhouettes if taken correctly in camera are actually pretty straight forward and don't need much editing at all i've chosen this image of a pipe kingfisher sitting on a tree stump silhouetted against the brighter water off the chobe river and i took this photo on neutral exposure because most of the frame was filled with the brightness of the sky and the water and therefore the bird came out naturally dark but not completely black and featureless so i'm going to deepen the blacks until i only recognize the animal by its shape after that i'm going to boost the contrast because essentially that is what a silhouette should be a stark contrast between bright and dark i'm also going to increase clarity to accentuate the shape a little more and after i increase the overall exposure a bit since it is a sunset silhouette i would like to enhance the beautiful colors and i do that with the vibrance slider which affects the mid tones only rather than the saturation feature which affects highlights shadows and mid-tones equally and can often look overdone with silhouettes i often zoom in and have a closer look at image noise which can easily be visible in the sky to get rid of most of it i make use of the graduated filter selecting mostly just the sky and reducing the noise by dragging the slider to the right since i do not need much detail in the background i'm happy to go quite extreme here as i quite like the softening effect and as always my last step is sharpening while masking the parts that i want to be sharper and increasing the slider until it looks good in addition to removing the noise from the sky only with the graduated filter i will now also add a little bit of overall noise reduction by using the luminance smoothing tool and voila that is the final version before and after all right looks like we're almost through all the techniques last but not least let me walk you through a typical panning shot edit in the image here you see a lioness that is walking and the different tones of the vegetation and the scent she was walking on was really ideal for this technique let me start off by cropping the image and my idea if i look at the image would be to have the lightness in the top third of the frame giving her some open room towards the right hand side where she walks towards and to include that bit of blue color right at the bottom here since the image is a little bright i bring the exposure down and then increase the whites deepen the blacks and adjust the shadows and highlights to the look i like i'll add contrast texture and clarity all to bring out in the streaky background as well as the liners i'll add a bit of vibrance too but i will do a bit more local adjustments in a bit the general color tone in the image seems again quite green to me so i add in a bit of magenta and i'm also going to cool down the color temperature especially with lions i found that this scent colored fur can easily look too yellow and saturated so you really want to keep that in check next i will grab a radial filter make a selection around the lioness invert the mask and then darken all around her which then leads the viewer right to the main subject i will also decrease the sharpness within the same selection to slightly blur the corners making use of several adjustment brushes now i first add extra saturation brushing all around the liners to intensify the colors of the background only and with another brush i like to enhance details on the liners for that i use a bit of texture clarity and sharpness and then i'm gonna brush only over the parts that are in focus the third brush will brighten the face a little more and then the last one i used to emphasize the eyes using the iris enhance preset within the brush a bit of overall sharpening at the end and i'm done definitely quite an improvement over the original i think let me know if you like it and what was your favorite edit in the comments down below i'm always happy to receive some feedback from you guys and until next time happy editing and see you soon bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 9,904

Keywords: bird photography, creative photography ideas, creative photography ideas nature, creative wildlife, creative wildlife editing, creative wildlife photography, fine art wildlife photography, how to do wildlife photography, how to photograph red squirrels, nature, nature photography, outdoor photography, photographing wildlife, photography, tutorial, wildlife, wildlife photography, wildlife photography tips, wildlife photography tutorial

Id: 5BR8vsK84U8

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021