Lessons

Lesson Info

Editing: Macro Detail

(wind whooshing) Searching for interesting new perspectives on places that are really overshot is something that I take pride in here in Iceland, especially. And sniping in on the icebergs and getting these macro perspectives, you reveal a whole new side of the ice. And there's so many ways to frame those tiny, tiny little frozen flows of water and the speckles of ash and the air bubbles that are in the ice. There's so many options. Been through my selections and I've found one frame that really, for me, just captures the feeling of... Even just touching the iceberg, it kind of comes across in this image, I believe. We're gonna dive into the edit and check out a way to kind of enhance the natural light in the image and bring in the eye to the subject, the focal point where the image is sharp. And because we shot this with the macro, and we're at F 2.8, and we're so close, just the the finest area of the scene is actually sharp. And I feel like it's my duty to bring that to the viewer...

's attention so that they're not looking at the wrong areas that are blurry. It's quite confusing, but this method really can help to amplify what we already have in the raw edit. So we're gonna move to the pre-edit formation. I'm gonna go D, jump into the edit. Good feeling. Always get stoked pushing that old D and getting that raw file up. I know there's some good stuff coming, usually. First thing, as I do in most of my work, is bring up the crop and just work with what we have. I shot this on the Olympus, so we're actually dealing with a different ratio. I feel most comfortable, at this point, working with my landscapes in 2:3, so I'm just gonna bring that up. And actually it kind of works best for this frame, anyway. So just looking at bringing that line or the crazy formation... I guess you would... Let's call this the frozen line. So bring the frozen line into the middle third, and it trails off across into the top-left. So we have the image open. And the edit begins. The blue is pretty perfect already, slightly to the pink as normal. So I'm just gonna bring the tint across. And I am wanting to test the contrast and really see which areas have natural highlights. So one click of the Tone Curve is so powerful in this image. And we already have something I'm pretty stoked with in one click. So pulling in the highlights with the Tone Curve as well. This is gonna give us that boost in saturation that I'm never happy with, so I'm just going to start with just bringing it down via the global saturation slider, and bring up the exposure a little bit. Something that's really getting me annoyed right now, and this is a great tip for any time you're using the shallow depth of field in your shots. You may experience chromatic aberration, and that is the strange hue of color that is appearing along the edges of the areas that are in focus. And it's a really easy fix in most cases, via the Lens Corrections panel. So we have the automatic option for removing the chromatic aberration, and in this case it's just quite strong, so it's not actually helping very much. We're gonna have to dive into the manual approach. And that is to get this dropper tool, move over the area of color and just simply click where that line is occurring. And it will give you an estimate, off the bat, of what it thinks will remove it. And then of course you can just slide the amounts and play around a little bit until you are visually happy; because at the end of the day, your eye is the best gauge and you should always trust that over the software and what that thinks is correct. Getting there. Whoa. This one's quite challenging 'cause there's so many variations in saturation and hue. Oh, there we go. All right. Pretty stoked with that. Drop that. Drop her back on there. And we're gonna move into the next phase. So now we've got rid of that. That was actually a clear distraction in the shot, so do keep that in mind when you're shooting shallow depth field. Next I'm gonna work on the way the light sits in this photo. So the first thing I can see is naturally the sun was coming in from the top-left. And I remember this iceberg and how it was placed, and that's actually what was going on. So I'm gonna enhance that and see if I can make the eye kind of travel along this frozen line. So just bringing that in. Gonna test a little bit of brightening in the beginning, just see how that works. I like that. Can do with that. And I feel like this area needs a little bit of brightening in the middle, so I'll try and bring in a Radio Filter for that. I don't wanna overdo it. Again, trying to make these appear seamless and without having this distinct circle wave used to filter. Just bringing in a tiny bit of exposure. Always working with small changes. I'm just gonna test a little bit of fade. For some reason I just feel like doing that ahead of time, just to see kind of how the dark areas look once I manipulate the Tone Curve a little more. Maybe even just bring in a little additional point. Starting to like this. I think there needs to be some work on the color, so that's what I'm gonna do. Jump into the HSL. Just moving across a little bit to the blue to make it a little more of a greenish blue. Definitely oversaturated still, so just take some of that away. Feel like there could be a little bit more impact and maybe that is with clarity. Even though this tool is so intense, maybe just a tiny adjustment on that could could help. And in this image, I feel like this part of it is quite distracting, so it's gonna require two Radial Filters to kind of flatten that exposure in this area. Quite simple ones on this. And it's all about just visualizing, just scanning across the photo and seeing if there's any of these inconsistencies that you can kind of just brush over. That made actually quite a big difference there. And we're gonna go new, just start again, put one here. I actually find in this particular image, they already have this circular shape, so you can kind of just like set your Radial Filter, bring in the feather, and it would just naturally fit. It's quite cool. It makes life easy. Okay. Getting close. Gonna work on the brightness in the top now because I think... I think even... I feel like the crop, even, just needs to be slightly lower. Cool. I'm liking this. Bringing in a filter now from the top to just darken and draw the eye into that center point again. Everything that I do is really to try and isolate the focal point, isolate your subject, bring the viewer's attention to it. Okay, this is really revealing a bright area to the right. That's gonna require a brush, I think, because it's quite a strange shape. The flow or density are low again, maybe even lower a little bit 'cause we want it to be just kind of soft, this adjustment. And we're just gonna work to darken that area. Yeah. I like it. Doing a new one, a little bit extra. Just gonna see what happens if I brighten... I know I darkened above. But if I just brighten this a little bit, it might help create more of a even flow. Shout out to everyone who says what I'm doing is super random, 'cause it is. It's very random stuff, but it works. What does this need? It needs more consistency and more cohesion in exposure. So I've got a... I've picked a brush, and using that soft opacity of the flow and the density to just darken these side areas that appear bright. I'm doing all of these things... It's like a sculpture. I guess it's like making a smooth surface, and it just comes down to attention to detail. Of course you don't have to do these things, but, I mean, I personally just get a kick out of doing it and going that extra mile. And doing that has created, I think, this additional kind of stylistic approach that has led to me getting some really cool jobs and opportunities. So I think it's been... Actually it's paid off nicely, putting the extra effort in. This top corner. Getting close, but I just... This one, because it's patchy, there's so many... the ice was very wavy. You can't notice so much in this but it was, meaning that light was catching in so many different areas. And I just have to kind of keep refining with these filters to kind of get that perfect kind of seamless light. I really wanna keep this flow down from the top-left. But the more that I'm editing now, the more I'm seeing that it's kind of just all about this right area. Okay, here we go. Now we're getting there Gonna punch in a little bit of more contrast on this one, and maybe even just bring up the highlights. I know that's gonna blow out some areas, but in this case, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we're breaking the code. That's what my life moral is, just break the code whenever you need to in photography. If it's composition, if it's editing practice, just go nuts and try a bunch of things. Okay, we're getting close now. Sharpening. I'm just gonna bring up the amount, and as normal, look at the masking. There's such obvious focal points in this, or the line of focus is so obvious that the masking is just so straightforward in this one. You barely even have to think. It's just finding the point where none of the out focus areas are sharpened, and boom. Going in, punching in quickly to check that it still has that realistic effect because sometimes the masking and the sharpening can make it look kind of chalky. I don't like that appearance, so just double checking that. One more thing and then I feel like we've achieved that very smooth and consistent exposure across this one. What I'm doing right now is just fixing a patch of darkness that is throwing my eye off in the way that this curved ice formation is. And then it needs one more darken underneath. Yes. All right. Just like that. There we have it. This one is really cool. I can see this, especially because of the lack of detail, you could really print this quite big, I think. And I think it would be a talking point. It would be something that you could really explain and people would be shocked to know: "Whoa, it's ice? I thought it was water. I thought it was metal that was melted down." There would be so many perceptions of what this is. And I've had, in the past, some of my images, people just have no idea what it is. And I don't know, I find it fun to explain it. And they're usually quite mind blown. And yeah, it's a cool talking point. And you never know, this could become something that a company could really use in their branding. You just go out and shoot it and then put your heart and soul into it; and then if it's online for people to see, it could lead to something cool.