how much is too much is the question and this is also a very
interesting topic when it comes to landscape photography how much is too
much editing in Lightroom how much is too much post-processing in Photoshop we
will talk about this and I will share my thoughts while editing some landscape
photography in Lightroom of course so don't go anywhere stay here
welcome to my channel here we talk about photography and I make videos just just like
this one where I share my thoughts about editing landscape photography in
Lightroom so if you're here for the very first time it might be a great idea to
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look at this I am sure that if you are a photographer like me and you post your
images on different social media you have received this question how much did
you work on this image did you use Lightroom how much did you edit in
Lightroom how much did you change these colors how much did you do what did you
do I get very annoyed by those kind of questions because in my opinion it
doesn't really matter this is not the point how much is too much it's a very
personal question yes I don't think there is too much I don't think there is
a limit the limit is yourself the limit is your vision the limit is what you see
when I shoot my landscape photography and I have eventually a vision of what I
will do in Lightroom
this vision might change over time this vision might
change by the time I get back it doesn't really matter while editing
this photo the limit is what is compelling to my eyes to my vision
in the only thing that matters to me is that the result is pleasing my eyes yes I
do post images on social media and people will ask questions but in the end
I will only share an image that is compelling to me that is pleasing to my
eyes there is the result of my vision both while I take the shot and while I
edit that photo but then you might have the objection that there is people that
are using multiple photos sometimes of even different places to create a
composite image that does not exist that does not correspond to reality well you
know if that's what they like if that's what they envision why not
maybe personally I'm not a big fan of that kind of photography at the same
time I am guilty too because in my lady in red series I do some composite too
basically I take two shots one long exposure and one short exposure in order
to freeze the subject in that landscape the frame is the same the composition is
the same but that scene does not really exist and by the way since I mentioned
those photos let's see what I'm talking about
so it is up to you to decide what you like what you don't what you like for
your photography and what you like for other people photography and in the end
as usual the most important thing is just to create so rather than sitting at
the desk judging other people photos why don't
you just go out take photos for yourself create your own landscape embrace your
vision and bring it to life - talking about this I think we should move to
Lightroom and see how I edit my landscapes you will tell me how much is
too much here I am at my desk in front of Lightroom and I have this lady in red
series picture taken in Iceland in this beautiful place which is the Vestrahorn
headland I was lucky enough that nobody else was there and this is the beauty of
traveling alone this lady in red shot is different from most of the
others as a matter of fact this is only one shot I'm not actually merging two
images together and not using a long exposure f8 iso 100 one twentieth of a
second with my loyal 20 millimetres f 1.8 it's a cloudy day low clouds and in
my vision I see the lady in red which is harmless but fearless that is facing the
strength and the drama of nature so I want to create drama in the sky but
because I wanted to retain the details in the foreground I exposed my image all
the way to the right as you can see from my histogram and I will be able to
retrieve a lot of details from the sky I do want to create drama with this image
let's get started as usual xxxxxxxx really no Siri no leave me alone
as usual I will start from the aspect ratio in this case I'd like to
use this image for my thumbnail so let's see if the sixteen by nine crop will
work and I believe so I open the basic panel i changed the profile to Adobe
landscape which already brings some saturation in you can see and I already
have more details even in the upper part of the image I didn't use any ND filter
for this photo but at the same time I want to check my white balance so I go
and pick up a white neutral target and as you can see this does not work at all I
will try cloudy and I think I like cloudy better first thing first I want
to fix whites and blacks I hold down the shift key double click on whites and
double click on blacks and I already expanded a little bit my histogram to
the left this time I will decrease the exposure a little bit add a little bit
of contrast decrease the highlights by a lot I go all the way to minus 100
just a little bit of shadows, a touch of clarity I will work with the dehaze quite
a bit and you can see how the mood is changing already very quickly a little
bit of vibrance you will remember from my previous Lightroom tutorials the
vibrance is increasing the saturation to the more muted colors present in the
image while the saturation is actually increasing the saturation to every
single color I will give it a touch of saturation as well now let's go to the
tone curve and I will see if the medium automatic contrast will work for me I
think it does I'm not going to touch the hue saturation and luminance panel for
now I will go straight into the split toning details as you know Lightroom will apply
a little bit of sharpening right away but I will change the radius want a
smaller radius but I will increase the details I will hold the Alt key move the
masking slider to the right in order to see where the sharpening will affect
everything that is going to be white will be touched by the sharpening
whatever is black will not be touched that I don't want any sharpening in the
clouds and now I can increase the sharpening and I will be sure that will
only affect the areas that I care let's zoom in to see if that's too much you
can see that the edging here is creating some kind of weird artifacts and so
sometimes is the image that is telling you it's too much so move it back and I
think it's better my chromatic aberration and my profile Corrections
are happening at the moment of my import check out my previous videos to see how
that can be set and I will go to the effects panel because I want to add some
vignette into my shot and let's see with these quick general adjustments what kind of
results we have this is the before very flat this is the after before after now
let's add some local adjustments and the main thing I want to do is to increase
the drama in the sky so I will use a graduated filter I will double click on
effect in order to reset all the sliders I will hold the shift key and drag down
my filter from the top release let's decrease the highlights here let's
increase actually the contrast I want to decrease the blacks
I want to decrease the exposure maybe too much maybe not I will add some
dehaze and I want to decrease the saturation also I would like to remove
this filter from this part of the mountains that are becoming very very
dark here to the left and to the right and in order to do so I will I will
click on the bottom left corner in order to see which part of the images are
affected and then I will select the brush within the graduated filter and I
will click on erase in this way I can create a brush that will erase the
filter from the area that I don't want to be touched you can see that the red
is disappearing
and for the sake of the video I'm doing this in a very quick way because I want
this video to last forever at the same time if there are areas of the photo
that are not touched by the graduated filter like the clouds on the left and
the clouds on the right I can use a brush and instead of erasing I will
actually stay to the a brush and fill in those area that were not actually
touched by the graduated
okay this is that let's see how it looks before after before after
what do you think is this too much so in my opinion we should not put any limit to
creativity it sounds like a crazy contradiction in terms
I believe instead that we should follow our vision trust our taste please our
eyes without trying to please everybody else and it is also natural that over
time our way of seeing things will develop will change in my own experience
my way of seeing my way of editing in Lightroom changed a lot over time not
only because I learned new techniques but mainly because my tastes changed and
I think it's a good thing it means that we are still searching but I am curious
to know what do you think about this so don't be shy don't be lazy just a few
words in the comments below easy I appreciate that I hope you
enjoyed this video I hope you learnt something new and if you did I think he
should or could hit the like button maybe share the video with the wife husband
boyfriend friend thanks for watching and I will
see you in the next well wait a second actually I would like to know who is
watching until the very very end if you do just write in the comment I do now
thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video