I let 4 PROS and 2000 AMATEURS edit my PHOTOS | The results were amazing

a big thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this week's video just wanna watch them stars fall would you who don't wanna try to make up dreams just to be good morning everybody fantastic to see you all again so i'm in my studio this log cabin here with my fire going it's snowy outside what could be better eh well i could go out and be able to go out in the snow and take some photos but there's been um this editing challenge that i set last sunday and there's been so many entries over well there's probably been thousands to be honest i think i've gone through 1800 and they're still coming in but i had to have a cut off um it's thursday now and i've got to record and edit the video and it's quite difficult to go through all those photos so i spent most of yesterday and this morning going through those photos and narrowing them down and there's three photos that i asked you to edit of mine and i've also asked some professional photographers mass peter everson mark littlejohn michael shaneblum and james popsis to edit them as well and they've got those those in and they're really interesting i'm going to show the pros at the end so before we do that what i want to do is go through these raw photos yeah so so this was the first one this was taken with my drone this is the old man of store in scotland and you can see that the exposure is pretty good so if i look at the histogram here you can see you know the shadows are pushing the limits but there's no burnt out highlights and if i look at the exposure you can see that i can pull up some detail here so this i thought was a good one because um i think it's a good edit i i'm quite happy with the composition here i placed the old man of store pretty well um there was some really nice light i didn't have a lot of sky in it because um there was not a lot of detail in the sky but there's information to pull out in the sky so i thought this was an interesting one to start with the next one was this one just down the road in the quran in on the isle of skye as well and this one was a little bit interesting because this when when i took this it was hectic we were on a workshop we'd arrived here and things happen really quickly and the sun came out as it does and you're running around like headless chicken um i think i took three photos none of them in the same spot i slightly moved the composition so i didn't manage to take any multiple exposures which would be nice and i think it's exposed as well as i could do but you can see if i drop the exposure the sun's very well burnt out which always is the case with the middle of the sun but i'd like it a little bit better than this um but if we look at the rest of it then you can pull up those shadow details that said seven nikon z7 is amazing you can pull up the shadow details and get a lot of information but there's a lot of things to do in this a lot of different ideas that i had in my mind around editing this um and so i thought this would be another one good one for you to edit and the final one is this one which is in snowdonia towards um triffen here and this was actually in a video i can share it here that i did um so you can see how i took a picture just up the stream from here i actually dismissed this shot because i wasn't happy about this foreground here but when i looked at it again i thought you know it's actually not that bad um but i thought it was a little bit messy and the waterfall maybe went off to the left but i thought it'd be interesting to see what you guys could do with the edit of it and again the exposure's pushing the limits really so there's this burnt out sky which doesn't really matter i don't think but there's a lot of um shadow detail you can pull back so there's a lot you can do with these through three images and oh my word did you do a lot so let's jump in to the actual um shots themselves okay i'm going to do the old man of store first first we'll look at calls so this was an interesting one it's a slightly different crop and yeah carl's done a really good job of creating a very mysterious image here it's totally not how i would have edited it i really wouldn't have edited it like this at all but i really like it the only thing i'd say is that maybe these um highlights here on the rocks are just a little bit overdone um just toning those down it might have just made a little bit better but it really stood out i really like that call the next one was adam so this one of adams i thought was really good completely different it was a whole shot but you've burnt out the highlights a little bit at the top and you've done that in a really nice way i think so i really like this um so that's a great job adam simla shot this this was um a shot by carrie which i really liked um i felt like it captured the mood when i was there and obviously you guys weren't there and it's difficult when you're trying to edit a photo and you've not been to the location or you weren't there when you took the photo to try and get that right but i think carrie's done a really good job here i really like this and also she's cloned out some distractions here and here which i thought was really important i spotted those so you just eye leads through the image really nicely so great job that carrie i really like this one as well this is a really interesting one from matthias i think that's how you pronounce it now my taste has moved the sun so the sun was was um rising here and he's moved it to here which when i first looked at it i thought this looks amazing i really liked it he cloned out these details here i really like the rock detail here that the mood that's being created is amazing and this was almost my favorite but but it wasn't because i feel that that sun's not true and you know if you think about the sun coming through here it just doesn't add up to the the the way the light's coming through here so in my mind i then just sort of didn't quite like that as much as um as the other ones so the next one here is a lovely vertical edit um from rob um and rob has just done a fantastic job here it's it's so different as well when you crop it just shows how much cropping an image can can do i like this sort of burnt out area here it sort of leads through into the image and then this mysterious sort of path of light here looks fantastic so my favorite one if we just go back is carry um i like this it's a little bit lighter of an image which is probably what i prefer it's not quite so as dramatic but it just captures the essence of what it was like when i was there that morning okay on to the next set of images and that's the and these photos hi pebbles okay these photos were really really amazing um it's probably my favorite photo this as well of the of the three so this is the first one from alexandro and he did a really really good job of just graduating these tones in the in the sun here he's got a nice balance here on the tree and yeah i really really like this and the crop's just a little bit different as well so this is what attracted me to this shot and the next one here from hamish is again a bit about the crop really so i think a crop can make a really big difference to an image and here he's made a bit of a letterbox crop got rid of the bottom part of it you know all this stuff down here which i think actually works quite well um and i really i really like this he's got rid of the flares here as well which i think is pretty good from the sun nice graduation some nice colors here and this one from laura i really liked what one thing that laura did that i thought was quite interesting that quite a few other people had missed um was the road here um and and she actually cloned the road out now i don't know whether i would clone that road out it's quite a big element of it and it's something that means something to me but i can understand why people do that and she's also cloned the road out here hello pebbles the road out here which i think works quite well this one from till is a very different sort of edit it's light it's you know reduced saturation and it proves that you can get different types of images from the same raw file this is a very different look at a very different feel to the image it's probably not my favorite but it's the one that stood out probably the most of all of all the images onto this one from chris so this was i felt really really good job of this area here some really good dramatic lighting it really works hard on the light in here and you know the lighting around here nice graduation there so i really like this one from chris this is from matus which was an interesting one i think he's um gone to town with one of the filters here it looks like he's added fogging um i'm not sure i'm a great lover of that but you know it's created an effective shot here something a little bit different and i really like the graduation he's created in the sky here got rid of that um glow and warmth of it and made it a cooler sort of more foreboding image and then this one from kathy is just amazing i really really like this image all this edit of the image and cathy's removed the road down here left the road in there got rid of the flare a beautiful graduation from the sun reduced the saturation a little bit but not too much and i feel this looks really good and then the final one is martin's image here which um again is a bit different different tone to it he's toned it a little bit differently and i really like what martin's done with this i like the fact that uh you know there's just these browns and greens that sort of stand out and really i think he's really concentrated on looking at the color and the tonality of the image but my favorite was this one from kathy so that kathy you've won a vistas book and a copy of this a one-of-one copy of this print so i'll print this out for you sign it one of one and you can it can be your edit on the wall actually i printed this one out so i'll just show you um this is this is kathy's image edited i'll do this for all the my favorites of the three images but you can see that um it just looks so good it's got that real painterly look to it and i really like that in an image that painterly look is is what all i always strive for in my edits so this really stood out to me it looks fantastic the glow here and yeah the whole thing just looks beautiful so i'll be sending you this print kathy thanks ever so much for editing it and thanks to everybody else that edited this image um and i'll tell you more about a web page i'm going to be setting up to share these images okay on to snowdonia so let's just go and find the snowdonia ones so this was a view towards triffen and snowdonia and [Music] there were some really good edits of this i felt like it was the trickiest of the three images to edit there were some compositional challenges certainly down here this was quite sort of messy this this foreground and i feel like how you edited that foreground would make a difference to the image so that was something i i dismissed this photo at first to go for another photo that i'd shared quite a lot online but when i was going back through them i felt this probably deserved an edit um i think the background can be edited really well i think the foreground's quite tricky so i was interested to see what people did so this was one from gabriella and i really liked the background here i thought that worked really well i just felt on this image that even though it was quite a nice tonality to it perhaps this was just a little bit too bright and and drew your attention a little bit too much and that i want to show you this one because um same um type of edit and brighten the the foreground too much happened on quite a few so i thought it was worth mentioning this one from jerome i felt was how i would edit it um it's a really soft nice glow here that the mountain's really nicely edited it's not too sharp and it's quite soft this is nice and soft you know you've got rid of some of the highlights in the water here it's just beautiful just a little bit of a distraction down here that um probably needed removing um but apart from that drone it's good good edit so this one from miziko is again a dramatic edit it's it's not again how i'd edit it but i feel like it works for the image i think just a little bit less saturation on the greens might have helped out because i think this is maybe just a little bit over saturated and again this distraction down in the bottom here this image from phi is a a really good tonality to it some nice contrast but i wanted to show you on this image because a lot of people did this this same thing is if you over sharpen the image then you can get bad artifacts in in the image so yes you've just got to be a little bit careful about sharpening onto this one from femke this is a gorgeous toned image i love where the rock positioning is here and the balance down here works well your eye can go either way i really like that warmth in the lake here reflected from the sun and the sun just sort of peeking over the mountain i feel like it's just a nice balanced shot this one from andy he's brought out the sky a little bit more and i thought that was quite interesting i wanted to show this though i liked the overall edit but i felt that just this area here just didn't fit with the rest of it i felt like this needed to be a little bit darker um and just got to watch your edges around um the the mountain there apart from that yeah i mean this this was a really lovely edit okay so the best one or my favorite there's not a best one is there the one that i enjoyed the most was this one here from fancy and it yeah i really really liked it so i'll make sure i print that out and i'll send it on to you um and thanks um for editing and thanks to everybody for editing the photos i really appreciate it okay before i go on to look at the pros photos i just want to say a little bit about squarespace squarespace have sponsored me for the last two years i think and they're going to continue to sponsor me for the rest of the year which is just so amazing to me and my channel it means that it takes a lot of pressure off it means that i can concentrate on doing you know exciting things and trying to bring different things to the channel and i've got so many ideas if we get out of lockdown i've got so many ideas of what we can do this year i built a web page of all these images with squarespace so you can go and have a look at my favorite sort of 10 or 15 images from each of the shots and i did that with squarespace it's super easy i've said it so many times before but it really really makes my life so much easier as a professional photographer but if you're an amateur and you're looking to set up a website and to showcase your images then squarespace is a fantastic tool to be able to do that and if you are looking to do a website then make sure you go to squarespace.com forward slash nigel and you'll get 10 off with your first purchase okay on to the first shot and this is james's image so james decided to do the quang um and he um i spoke to james about this and he he basically said that firstly he cropped it 16-9 he wanted to be really tight on the mountains here to create a bit of drama um and then he basically warmed it up and toned it so that it had a very warm feel to it he wanted to blow out the sky here um and create this sort of glow which i think works so well but just keep a little bit of cloud in here just to keep that little bit of detail around these mountains because i think that's where your eye goes and then he also cloned out a few things um you know the flares etc and then the other thing that he mentioned is he darkened this area here so your eye is drawn through into the main mountains so that was james's so the next one here was from mass of uh snowdonia and mass basically did some correction for lens distortion it was a 14 millimeter lens don't forget and so he corrected for lens distortion here looked at chromatic aberration and any um vignetting and got rid of that got rid of any specular highlights on the water and then basically just did a correction and some tonality changes to make sure had impact but didn't look too over um hdr'd and i think you know he's done a fantastic job of doing that and and then you know the sun just coming through looks fantastic yeah i really like this again this is probably how i'd like to think i edited it i i don't think i'm as good an editor as mass to be honest think he's got extremely um excellent editing skills but you know i i love that i love that edit the next one's from mark mart littlejohn and he um told me a little bit about this so he cropped the right hand side here so um what he wanted to do was have the old man smack bang in the middle to give it more um sort of dominance within the frame you know he feels like this is a real ancient place and he wanted to be true to that but he did say because he hadn't um taken the shot it's always more difficult for him to edit it uh and i think that's true really i think if you haven't taken the shot you haven't been they haven't felt the wind on your face then it's more difficult but he um he has been here so that helps and um he wanted to create drama in there so he created a little bit of warmth in in the areas where the sun's breaking through and split tone it as well with the shadows warming the shadows and warming the highlights which i think looks really really good and the final one is from michael of the karang which obviously is a completely different edit to james's and he has done an amazing job of just this graduation of tones from the sun through here i feel like michael's extremely good at doing that if you're gonna have a look at his work he's so good at creating that sort of softness to his images um i really wish i i could do it as well as him he he's so so good at it and he's brought that through into the mountains and it creates this real majesty to the image i feel i really like it um and you know it's just it's understated but still magnificent if you see what i mean so yeah i think michael's done a a great great job there okay so there's a few things i wanted to say that i thought were important from this you know some learning outcomes really and one of them was sharpening because a lot of people i felt over sharpen the images and there's a real tendency to do that to want you think that an image looks better if it's got more punch and it looks sharper but if you looked at that image of michael's at the end you know it's got a soft sort of beautiful feel to it and that painterly look to it so i i just think about that and and think about sharpening your images the other thing was distractions and just removing distractions it's really easy to go and remove distractions i talked about that in last week's video um you know that final thing you should do is probably go around the edges and look for anything else that's just distracting that you can just spot out and then the other thing i wanted to mention was balancing of tone ality in an image i felt like some of the edits that the foreground was brighter than the sky and it just it doesn't work that because the sky in an image is pretty much always going to be one of the brightest elements and certainly where the sun is so you can't have a foreground that's brighter than that and just getting a balance that looks natural i think is really important in landscape photography so think about that okay so thanks ever so much for watching i hope you've enjoyed it it was a really difficult one to go through this week took a lot of time if you've liked the video please please give it a thumbs up i'd love to hear your comments what you thought my choices below and until next sunday bye [Music] you

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 73,457

Rating: 4.9403834 out of 5

Keywords: photos, edit, photography, editing photos, lightroom, RAW photos, editing challenge, nigel danson, Nigel Danson photography

Id: r5_hCBn66UE

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021