First Attempt - Photo Editing

[Bmoney]

Hey all,
Recently picked up a Mavic Air. Took this photo over the bay a couple days ago. I know nothing about photo editing but grabbed the trial of Adobe Lightroom and figured I'd give it a go. Wanted to post it here and get some thoughts on how it turned out? Over editing? Anything I should change to make it better? I just basically went down the list of sliders and moved them till I felt it made the photo look appealing but not over the top. Any thoughts, tips or criticism is welcome. Thanks!

Also as a secondary question: Is there an easy way to get a photo like this into "Instagram Format" via Lightroom. I'd love to post some photos to Instagram but I think their format is 800x800. Any easy way to convert or save the photo in the correct format?

 

[JDawg]

Have to ask, did you shoot it in Raw?

 

[Bmoney]

Unfortunately I did not read/learn about that until after this photo was taken so this was taken as a JPEG and edited as such. Going forward I have set the Photo settings to JPEG+RAW.

 

[JDawg]

Unfortunately I did not read/learn about that until after this photo was taken so this was taken as a JPEG and edited as such. Going forward I have set the Photo settings to JPEG+RAW.

Kind of thought this was shot as jpeg. You will be surprised how much you can do with Raw. Enjoy!

 

[Porky]

I’m still learning myself but YouTube can also help you out. I started a thread couple of months back, quite long but it might help you out, it did me..

For a beginner

Your photo, from a complete novice, you sky is definitely burnt out but you should be able to sort that out in Lr to a degree.

Just to show what can be done in Lr, a before and after shot I took a couple of days ago. 1st photo is very flat, no life, 2nd is better. The photo was taken in Raw as @JDawg recommends.

Before


After


But again I’m still learning myself, no doubt someone with more experience will point you in the right direction, they did with me.

 

[macfawlty]

I learned nearly everything about Lightroom workflows from Serge Ramelli’s YouTube tutorials. He also has various instructional programs for a fee with a lot of steep discounts offered regularly. It’s not specifically drone related, but very comprehensive. Also a lot of round tripping with photoshop. The Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom subscription, at $5/month is the best deal in software period. Serge Ramelli Photography

 

[4wd]

Agree RAW gives you significantly more leeway with shadows and highlights a well as colour tweak.
You can export at any size I think the shortcut is CTRL+Shift+E but it's in the drop downs at the top too.
Also the grad filter is often very handy to pull down the sky brightness a bit.
Like everything else try to keep it subtle.

 

[macfawlty]

General observations about your photo.
- Straighten the horizon angle
- slight adjustment for lens distortion if needed
- use gradient control for sky (to darken/saturate/color) although, you won’t fully recover the blown highlights.
- gradient on terrain to lift shadows perhaps, add saturation, contrast, clarity or sharpness, noise reduction as needed.
- May look more dramatic cropped to a more panoramic aspect ratio. Too much sky and terrain doesn’t do much for wide landscapes unless theres unique interest.
- you may want to add a warm light source with the circle on the left where the blown hilights are.
- exposure differences between terrain and sky are a common issue with many flights. I would suggest bracketing your photo series by taking them at multiple exposures. The process then is to make adjustments to each image in Lightroom that complements the part of the image you’ll use for masking. Select all images>open as layers in photoshop>align layers. Then, mask out the parts you don’t want to reveal layer(s) below.

 

[53-63-6f-74-74]

I would also recommend shooting a burst using the AEB mode. I think it's almost a requirement for that particular scene. FYI Affinity Photo is also good software for editing, and very inexpensive. I think it's still on sale for $39.

 

[macfawlty]

I would also recommend shooting a burst using the AEB mode. I think it's almost a requirement for that particular scene. FYI Affinity Photo is also good software for editing, and very inexpensive. I think it's still on sale for $39.

I momentarily forgot about the AEB mode (auto exposure bracketing), which automates the manual bracketing I referred to. I mostly shoot video, but I do like the AEB feature.