Oly E-M1 @ 270mm, f/7.1, 1/400s, ISO-250.

Edited in darktable.

I’m new to photography and editing. I’m looking for advice on if this is a decent edit or should I have approached it differently? Most photos I see have more contrast, but if I push my blacks down anymore I’m afraid they’ll get crushed too much. Some already are with the current exposure. I don’t hate this edit personally, but I’d like it to look more “professional.” Any editing advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    6 days ago

    So if it were me, and assuming you’ve got an ORF (RAW) file for the photo, I’d use the color balance RGB module, and then play around with your shadows and power settings.

    If you’re really keen, you can use a parametric mask on the hz (luminance) and/or hue channels to select the background, and then boost the contrast of the background separately from the bird. Possibly give the background a little more saturation too.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      5·
      6 days ago

      An edited image of a bird, showing a more contrasty background than the original

      There’s a few artefacts and things in there because I was working with a pre edited webp file, but that’s what I’d do with it.

      This is my darktable module history.

      I used local contrast initially, but preferred how it looked without out, which is why it was turned off towards the end. The first color balance module was just using the “standard colorfulness” preset. The second color balance module boosted the luminance in the whole image, gave a bit more brightness to the shadows and mid tones, and increased the contrast. The final color balance module, I used a mask to isolate the background, and upped the contrast even more. This introduced artefacts in the background that wouldn’t be there if you did the same thing from a RAW file.

      And this is the mask I used in the final color balance module. I manually drew an area over the bird to exclude it, and then adjusted it slightly using the hue slider. I added a bit of feathering on the mask to get rid of harsh borders and to smooth out the impacts the artefacts had on the mask. Because I was only editing contrast, and not colour, the border didn’t need to be exact.

    • Tempus Fugit@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      6 days ago

      Thanks for the info! I’ve got some learning to do. Darktable is quite daunting for a noob, but I’m determined to learn.