Editing photos, The difference.

[alwaysthere4chickens]

There isn't a big difference between these two but I still like the second one a bit more.
Before:

After:

 

[Fuchsia]

I love to edit my pictures!

They all look so good everyone!

 

[alwaysthere4chickens]

I love to edit my pictures!

They all look so good everyone!

Do you have any you'd like to share?

 

[alwaysthere4chickens]

I took this picture from the window of our car.


Before:

After:

 

[Abriana]

Before edits:

After edits:

As you can see the color is not edited, it’s absolutely striking the white against green. This is my calendar entry for 2022

 

[alwaysthere4chickens]

Before:

After:

Do you think the sky is a bit to bright on the second one?

After after:

 

[azurbanclucker]

Before:
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After:
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Do you think the sky is a bit to bright on the second one?

Not so much the sky but the light on the railing looks off. With a sky that bright, your shadow side should not be a dark as it is in contrast with the sky and the lighting on the lit side of the rail.

 

[alwaysthere4chickens]

Not so much the sky but the light on the railing looks off. With a sky that bright, your shadow side should not be a dark as it is in contrast with the sky and the lighting on the lit side of the rail.

Does this look better?

 

[azurbanclucker]

Yeah better. Kicking the sky down a bit makes it blend more evenly.

 

[mdees88]

I agree with this post.... but like was mentioned, editing is all about achieving the specific look YOU are going for.

I'm liking ALL of the photo's previously pictured... and I will prefix my next comment with my belief that the correct amount of photo editing is the amount that results in the picture that YOU like to look at That being said - to "my eyes" I find that many of the previous photo's have had their colour oversaturated and the pictures, while vibrant, no longer look natural. Depends on what you are trying to achieve with your picture though!

Some handy and "general" tips for taking photos of your birds:

Use the rule of thirds - it's not an "absolute must" but it works well to balance your picture.

Practice your focusing skills - your eye is often drawn to a part of the photo that is most in focus and a blurry photo may not showcase your subject in the way you want. For a headshot it's often effective to aim to have the eye in focus.

Get up close and/or fill your frame with your subject - a bird in the distance gets lost in the picture and their features are less visible when far away.

Try to avoid things that distract from your subject - For example brightly colored or odd items in the background can draw the eye away from your subject.

Example of an "ok" photo: Lacy here is placed in the middle third of the picture frame, takes up about one third of the picture, the focus is on her brow (I wanted to show her comb and ear so focused in between the two), and my daughter wore a plain and non distracting jumper.
View attachment 2427931

Example of a photo that is "ok" but could be improved: Nugget here is placed in the middle third of the picture frame (ok) but only takes up about a quarter of the picture, she kind of gets lost in all that green grass and I also find my daughters gumboots to be a bit of a distraction - they draw my attention away from Nugget. I would suggest a combination of getting closer, using my camera's zoom features and/or cropping the picture.
View attachment 2427941

Number one rule = Have Fun!!

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When I first started editing pictures I applied WAY too much clarity, vibrancy, and saturation. The effects are very cool but they can quickly make the picture look unnatural. It took me a while to tone it all down and now I have a "less is more" approach to editing (at least in regards to vibrancy and saturation).

I do edit every picture I keep but most of what I do now is called dodging and burning. This is making parts of the picture brighter and other parks darker. On the vast majority of my pics I darken the background to make the subject stand out better. I will also make small adjustments to contrast and vibrancy, and I usually brighten up the shadows some. Another thing I do fairly often is warm up the white balance when I shoot on over cast days to give the pics a "golden hour" look. My end goal is to enhance the pic, draw focus to the subject, and do that without making the picture look unnatural.

Here's some of my before and after's. The biggest thing you'll notice is the darkening of the background to make the subject "pop".

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After

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