Hi. In this video, I show you how I edit landscape photography taken on a Canon 5D Mark IV.
Hi. I’m Adam and welcome to First Man Photography, the channel that will help you take your photography
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Okay, let’s get into this.
It’s been a while since we’ve been back in the studio.
I’ve been away to Mull and the Lake District last week: lots of great landscape photography
vlogs for you to watch.
If you haven’t seen them yet, please do check them out and, if you enjoyed them, I
would really appreciate it because it would help me out if you would share the videos:
share them on Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook that kind of thing.
I really, really would appreciate it.
For the vlog last week, I was in the Lake District and, while I was shooting the images,
it really made me think, since I've been using the Canon 5D Mark IV, I’ve changed the way
I've been shooting a little bit because of the superb dynamic range that camera has and
the detail you can pull out of the shadows.
So, I think the best thing to do is just to get into the computer and go through the editing
process and talk a little bit more about how I’ve been changing my editing process.
So let’s get into the computer now.
What I’m talking about is utilising the dynamic range of the Canon 5D Mark IV to capture
everything in the scene with one exposure.
That’s what I’ve done here by purposely under exposing the foreground here and the
shadow areas.
So, I’ve exposed for the sky, as you can see here, lots of detail in the sky and I
know, with this camera, I can pull that detail back out of that shadow area without too much
trouble, without introducing that much noise.
I don't like using ND grad filters and I’ve talked about that quite a bit recently.
I don't think it would have particular work in this image because I’ve got the mountains
here, that would have come below the skyline, and I’ve also got a higher exposure on the
reflection here so that would potentially have been overexposed if I had used an ND
grad.
I want to save time by not using it.
So, let's get into editing this photo and I will show you what I mean.
So, I’m gonna start on the exposure and just drag that up a little bit.
I may have gone a little bit too far on this image with under exposing it but I know I
can pull it back anyway.
So the next thing I’m going to do is scroll down to the Profile Correction here and just
remove that vignette a little bit.
This is a long exposure.
I’m at F20, 35 seconds at 17 mm so it has introduced a little bit of vignetting with
this image.
I’m going to remove that just by using the Lens Correction.
I am then going to increase the shadows a bit just to bring some of the detail out of
that foreground.
What I’ve been doing recently is using the software grads to control the exposure on
these parts of my image.
So, I’m going to leave it about there.
Keep it straight and increase the shadows a little bit more and drag the exposure up,
overall, on that foreground.
I want to reduce the highlights a bit to pull some of the detail back out of the reflection
in the water there.
Then I'm going to draw another one into the sky here to bring the exposure down in the
sky a little bit as well here.
You can see how effective that is in software.
It has brought the exposure down on the mountains a little bit here so I’m going to bring
them back with a bit of shallow boost right up to 100.
So, if we look at the histogram now, it is a nice shaped histogram.
I just want to bring the whites back up to pure white, there we go, and then back down
on the blacks to bring out pure blacks.
I have a nice even exposure across my image there now.
I'm going to then add some nice contrast to the image up to about there on the slider
and then I’ll, probably, add in a medium contrast curve as well and the image’s starting
to come together.
So, now I'm going to adjust the colour.
i might just drag the shadows up little bit more on the foreground.
Yeah, that's working nicely for me there.
Now I’m going to add the colour.
Add a little bit of vibrance, a little bit of saturation to bring those colours out and
then adjust the white balance to bring it back up to that nice warm feeling that I had
at the time of shooting.
That is really bringing the warmth out of those clouds there, the nice warm reflection,
especially, on this mountain in the distance where the light is hitting it.
Because of his cloud here, there wasn't that much light hitting this mountain here, the
snow-capped mountain here so that is not quite as warm as the rest the image.
But that works for me.
I’ll add a little bit of clarity there and I want to bring out the blue in the sky there
a little bit.
I’m just going to add in a little bit of blue saturation there.
If we now add a little bit of Tint in as well.
I don’t want to go too crazy on that and affect it too much.
If we click F, you can see that that is starting to look like a pretty good image.
Just to show you the detail though that that camera has in those shadow areas, if we zoom
in to the corner here.
I have lost a little bit of sharpness but part of that is going to be because it's long
exposure and you’ve got to accept that with some grasses and reeds and things like this,
when you’re doing a long exposure.
So I have lost a bit of sharpness there.
But, if we look at this rock, it is still pretty decent.
There is a little bit of noise there so I’m going to add noise reduction on there, the
Luminance and on the Colour.
If you look closely, you can see a tiny little bit of aberration still as well.
I’m going to go to the manual controls here and add a bit Defringe back in to the green
and the purple.
That is now starting to look pretty good.
If we then hit the reset button, you can really see the difference from where we started,
to get to there.
Given that is so dark there, and then we go back to there, that is very good detail with
not a lot of noise at all in those corner areas.
To notice that, if you printed this big, you would really have a hard time.
You’d have to look very closely, pixel peek to your hearts content, to pick out the noise
in that image.
I am very, very happy with how the image now looks.
Let's go on to one more image.
It had clouded over a little bit by this point.
There's not quite as much dynamic range in this image but it is still captured with one
long exposure of 105 seconds at F20.
I'm going to start by just increasing exposure a little bit and then bringing that ND Grad
over the sky to bring the exposure down a little bit and bring out some of the detail.
then I’m going to increase the shadows back up again so I don't lose the exposure in the
top of the mountain here.
So, then I’m going to do a similar sort of thing from the bottom of the screen to
increase exposure in the foreground and I can do that just by upping the exposure a
little bit, increasing the shadows and then I have nice even exposure across the scene.
Again, I’m going to bring in the true white, bring in the true black as well and then add
in my all-important contrast to the image.
I’m going to add contrast there and also going to add a medium contrast curve to it
as well.
Then just up the shadows across the image to really start to bring out the detail in
the foreground.
Now, I’m going to add my colour back to the image to bring it back up to what I was
seeing with my own eyes.
So, a bit of Vibrance, a bit of Saturation, Clarity as well and then I'm not far away.
I might drag the Highlights down a little bit more and then warm the image up just a
little bit… that’s a little bit too far… and then I am not too far off.
Let’s go down to the Profile Corrections as well and just remove that vignette that’s
been caused by that lens again.
I don't want to remove the Distortion though so I’ll put that back in and there I'm getting
pretty close to my final image.
Let me just drag the overall exposure down a little bit and there we have a pretty well
exposed image.
If we can hit F to review that, I’m not 100% with the composition: where I was there,
I was on a bit of a ledge so I couldn't really get much closer.
So, what I think I’ll do is just go into the crop tool and just crop the foreground
a little bit up to there just to bring that composition into where I want it to be.
I’ll have this rock in my foreground leading you into to the image which is what that has
done.
So, there I don't think it's far off.
I may go back into it later just to put those final adjustments to it.
If I hit F again, that's coming pretty close.
To make these adjustments, I'm using Adobe Lightroom.
If you haven't used it before, you haven't seen it before, I’ll put a link down below
to check that out and you'll get a free trial as well.
You also get Adobe Photoshop with that.
Since I have been using the Canon 5D Mark IV, you can these images just with one exposure
because of that dynamic range.
I haven't been going into Photoshop nearly as much as I used to.
I’ve been sticking in Lightroom.
Lightroom is getting better all the time.
It allows you to do more.
Lightroom is where i’m doing the vast majority of my editing these days.
I'm liking under exposing like this.
I didn't mean to do it,
It just start to happen naturally because I realised I could pull the detail out of
the shadows.
It’s really increased my efficiency.
It has let me capture 9 or 10 images on this trip, as well as all the video I’m doing
as well, so I'm not spending that much time taking each image.
It is working really well for me.
You may want to take things… do it your your way, do things a bit slower, if you have
the time, but I am doing as much as I possibly, trying to be efficient and use under exposing
like I am doing with a Canon 5D Mark IV with these high dynamic range scenes I have in
landscapes like this.
It is really working for me and I’m really please with how things are going.
Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that.
Please give the video the thumbs up if you did and leave comment down below to let me
know what you think.
I’d be interested to find out if you think this sort of process is cheating.
Or are you a purist?
Does it annoy you a little bit?
Or are you like me, wanting to get the very best out of the camera you are using so you
can really tell the story that you want to tell.
Also, if you haven't already, please do subscribe to the channel for new videos every Sunday
and every Wednesday.
I’ll see you on another one very soon.
I’m Adam.
This is First Man Photography…out.