How to Edit Photos for Incredible Adventure Photography
February 27, 2021
The first thing you need to start taking incredible photos is an understanding of composition and lighting. The second thing? You need to develop your own style and learn how to edit in order to create stunning Adventure Photos.
Editing refers to post processing a photo, or the changes you make after a photo has already been taken. It’s a huge part of developing your own unique and recognizable style. Another part of your own style comes in your subject matter and composition itself, all considered before the photo is taken.
Photo Editing for Adventure Photography
For me, editing is the part of photography where I take an initial moment and interpret it. With editing, you begin to tell a story in colors and images. This happens both with an individual image and in how your photos interact with each other. Sharing your work on Instagram or any other photoblogging platform you are essentially creating a living story. Photo editing is a fantastic tool for fine-tuning that story.
The degree to which you edit your photos is also a function of your style. Some people edit with the goal of photojournalism, others edit as a tool of creative expression. No matter where you fall on the creative spectrum, understanding both basic editing and artistic edits while help you develop as a photographer, and ultimately help you tell a story.
Concepts of Photo Editing
When it comes to post processing and photo edits, there are a couple of simple concepts to keep in mind before you dive in. Before you make edits and start to develop your own style, it’s important to understand exposure, various lighting adjustments, color basics, various effects, and appropriate use of cropping.
In order to start editing, you need an editing application. Adobe Lightroom is industry standard, and what I use and will use for all examples here, but you can make many of these edits in any editing application, including simply in Instagram.
Exposure
Put simply, exposure refers to how bright your image is, or how much light was let into your camera. Over-exposed photos will appear to bright or white, and under-exposed photos will appear dark. Your phone camera will usually appropriately expose a photo for you.
If shooting on a DSLR, shoot in camera RAW as opposed to JPEG, and aim for most of your photos to be slightly underexposed. A slightly underexposed photo is the easiest to edit, and preserves more details than an overexposed photo.
Lighting Adjustments
I typically use the same or similar lighting adjustments on every photo to create a more balanced image. On the iPhone photo below, I increased exposure and contrast slightly, lowered highlights and increased the shadows. On this image, I decreased the whites and blacks both to create a darker, more moody image. I use Adobe Lightroom for my photo editing, but there are other, free apps you can consider that offer similar functions for free.
Color Basics
Color is where your personality as an artist can start to show. It’s where you can bring out the colors in a sunset or storm cloud, and really make your photo pop. I used the color mixer a lot more when I was just beginning to understand editing. Now I used color grading more often (next section). Still I almost always decrease the luminance of the blues to darken up the sky, and will use the color mixer to emphasize certain colors in an image.
Above, you can see how much of a difference edits to color can make in a photo. Here, pinks were made more red, and blues more indigo.
Effects & Detail
Personally, I like to increase the texture of a photo, but decrease the clarity. The dehaze tool can help cut through haze of fog and make your image more defined, and adding a subtle dark vignette around the edges of your photo can help draw attention to the subject or center of the picture. Increasing the sharpening can sometimes make an image appear more in focus, while noise and color noise reduction can minimize that fuzzy look on photos taken in lowlight.
The sharpen and texture tools are especially useful when attempting to increase the definition in an iPhone photo, as seen above.
Cropping
Cropping your image is where you can correct composition in post processing. The first thing I recommend doing is straightening your horizon line. After that, consider the dimensions you want for your photo, and where you would like your subject to be placed.
This original photo above is from my beginner photography days, before I really knew what I was doing. The lake is crooked, and the focal point of the photo, the hiker, is not centered. Recently, I went back and recropped and edited the photo, increasing the shadows and decreasing highlights, then color grading the photo to be more aqua and indigo. The last edit I made was to selectively brighten the hiker, pulling her out of the shadows and making her the focus of the image.
Because the photo was taken in lowlight with an extremely high ISO (beginner mistake), I used the noise reduction tool to smooth out the image.
Editing Process for Adventure and Outdoor Photography
Once you understand the basic components of photo editing for adventure photography, you can begin to develop your style as a photographer and artist.
While photojournalism tends to fall on the light edits side, other people tend to take more creative liberties in their edits. I am in general one of these people. I’m going to walk you through the edits on several of my personal favorite artistic photos.
Edits for Autumn Photography
Getting the drama you want from autumn photos can be really hard. Here, the primary edits I made to play with the colors were in color grading and in bringing down the exposure and blacks.
I lowered both the exposure and contrast slightly. Decreased the highlights and increased shadows, then increased whites and decreased blacks. In the color mixer, I made my oranges more pink and my yellows more green. The last thing I did is color grading, which I’ll cover more in the final section.
Something to keep in mind for autumn photos: it can be really tempting to edit ALL of the of the green in a photo out in favor of sugary reds and yellows, but that’s an easy way for your photo to look “over edited”. Style is up to you, and if an edit makes you happy I say go for it, but it’s something to keep in mind. Personally, I like the genuine feel of the green foliage.
Rescuing a “bad” photo in Lightroom
Ever have a photo you thought would be beautiful come out… bad? Very disappointing? Before you throw it in the trash, take a close look at the photo below before, and after. Here are some quick “rescue edits” I made on this photo.
- Creative cropping. I cropped out the lens scratch, and changed the orientation to portrait. I knew I wanted to use this photo on Instagram and photos in portrait preform best on Instagram as they take up the most space on someone’s feed.
- Decreased shadows. Decreasing, or lightening the shadows in this photos brought the beautiful detail in the cliff wall out of the dark.
- Decreased luminance of blues. Decreasing the luminance of blues is a great way to darken skies and create a more striking image. Here, I also decreased the saturation of the blue as an artistic choice. I wanted the reds and oranges of the cliff wall to appear more striking than the sky, but I didn’t want to over saturate the rock. The contrast of the undersaturated sky emphasizes the color and detail in the cliffs.
The Photo Editing Secret All Successful Instagram Photographers Have Mastered…
It’s no secret that when you click on the Instagram grids of successful photographers their photos all fit well together. A huge part of this comes over time from developing a consistent editing style. For example, I almost always decrease contrast, increase texture, decrease clarity, and darken blues.
Beyond consistent edits, there are a couple of other things you can do to get consistent tones throughout your photos.
Notice how the images above all have similar colors and moods despite drastically different locations? The tool that leads to similar hues and consistent colors across images is color grading.
How to Color Grade
Color grading is a powerful tool that can easily be over done. I recommend experimenting with what colors you like and what grading works for you, but using the tool conservatively tends to lead to the best results.
The photo above is one of my earlier experiments with color grading, where I used the tool heavily and it shows. Today, I look at this image and cringe a little; I wouldn’t edit like this now. I absolutely recommend experimenting with edits like this even if it results in an image you later won’t like. The best way to grow as a photographer and editor is to learn what you like and don’t and what elements of editing you want to become a part of your style.
The best way to learn to color grade, is to start experimenting with the tool on multiple photos and get a feel for how changing the colors affects your images.
Above, you can see several examples of color grading. I tend to color grade lightly, and pull my shadows toward indigo tones and my highlights toward something warmer depending on the photo. It’s important to remember that while the purpose of color grading can be to create consistency throughout photos, it’s unlikely that any two photos from different days will look good with the exact same edits.
Photo editing is the part of photography where you begin to experiment with self- expression and there are so many ways to use editing to create a more artistic image, or to enhance your photojournalism. Ultimately, the best way to learn to edit is to practice editing.
Ready to experiment with photo editing, but don’t know how to get the most of your camera? Head over to How to Take Killer Adventure Pictures, Part One of this Three Part Series!
Stay tuned for next month, when we’ll tackle the camera gear you need to level up your adventure photography game.