Oly E-M1 @ 270mm, f/7.1, 1/400s, ISO-250.

Edited in darktable.

I’m new to photography and editing. I’m looking for advice on if this is a decent edit or should I have approached it differently? Most photos I see have more contrast, but if I push my blacks down anymore I’m afraid they’ll get crushed too much. Some already are with the current exposure. I don’t hate this edit personally, but I’d like it to look more “professional.” Any editing advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

  • afk_strats@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    First of all, this is an incredible shot! Second, I think your edit is solid. I am posting my edit of your pic to show you my interpretation of what I would post. I’m not implying that I somehow corrected your work, rather went with my gut for what looks good to me.

    The biggest change is the crop and I chose it because I wanted to highlight the fine textures captured and make sure they’re viewable even on small phone screens.

    I pumped contrast and saturation to my liking. I pushed blacks up and whites down to make sure I wasn’t clipping. In doing so, I stared seeing a lot of color noise so corrected that. There was also chromatic abberation/fringing on the wings, which I removed.

    I also added sharpening. And a slight vignette to focus eyes to the center.

    Lightroom settings (easily reproducible in Darktable):

    Exposure  -.20 f
Highlights -34
Shadows -18
Whites -4
Blacks +41
Temp -4/100 (towards cool)
Tint -3/100 (towards green)
Vibrance +27
Saturation +37

Tonal Contrast 
Texture +10 (fine)
Clarity +15 (mid)
Dehaze   +30 (coarse)

Sharpening +33 
Color Noise Reduction +32

Vignette -29
Removed Chromatic Aberration

    163

    • KevinFRK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      This is really interesting to compare and contrast with the original, each has its considerable virtues.

      This one has the bird really pop the moment you look at it, but then a realisation creeps up behind saying this looks a bit false, a bit like a model of a bird that you’ve lit and photoed in a studio, rather than a live bird out in the wild. In contrast, Tempus Fugit’s edit takes a little more time to appreciate, but then feels far more like a bird in its environment, with its colours more in tune with the background, and the wider crop helping with that.

      Now, magazine photos (or, as you say, scrolling on a phone) need that “pop”, they’ve so little time to keep you on the page.

      It’s the “in its environment” feel that I personally prefer for my bird photographs (if I did, e.g., portraits, my choices would be very different), and so I’ve not invested the effort in learning how to get birds to “pop”, but it’s very much a matter of taste and purpose. I still mess with global luminance, but that’s because I might know better than my camera a good light curve.

      In passing, I feel a little regret you didn’t have the RAW format form to play with (which might well be why your edits saw the colour noise).

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    2 days ago

    So if it were me, and assuming you’ve got an ORF (RAW) file for the photo, I’d use the color balance RGB module, and then play around with your shadows and power settings.

    If you’re really keen, you can use a parametric mask on the hz (luminance) and/or hue channels to select the background, and then boost the contrast of the background separately from the bird. Possibly give the background a little more saturation too.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      5·
      2 days ago

      An edited image of a bird, showing a more contrasty background than the original

      There’s a few artefacts and things in there because I was working with a pre edited webp file, but that’s what I’d do with it.

      This is my darktable module history.

      I used local contrast initially, but preferred how it looked without out, which is why it was turned off towards the end. The first color balance module was just using the “standard colorfulness” preset. The second color balance module boosted the luminance in the whole image, gave a bit more brightness to the shadows and mid tones, and increased the contrast. The final color balance module, I used a mask to isolate the background, and upped the contrast even more. This introduced artefacts in the background that wouldn’t be there if you did the same thing from a RAW file.

      And this is the mask I used in the final color balance module. I manually drew an area over the bird to exclude it, and then adjusted it slightly using the hue slider. I added a bit of feathering on the mask to get rid of harsh borders and to smooth out the impacts the artefacts had on the mask. Because I was only editing contrast, and not colour, the border didn’t need to be exact.

    • Tempus Fugit@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Thanks for the info! I’ve got some learning to do. Darktable is quite daunting for a noob, but I’m determined to learn.

  • KevinFRK@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    P.S. it’s this sort of discussion I most miss from my days on the photography subreddits, but I really went off the site owner’s policies, and decided “no more of my photos for you” (even if they are not of the best).

  • drkt@scribe.disroot.org
    3·
    2 days ago

    I think the image looks a bit flat. There’s a setting in Darktable for Chroma, maybe bump it up a bit? Play around with that. I usually have to give it a hefty bump on my animal shots, or else they just have this flat-grey feeling to them.

  • BroBot9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    This is already looking like a solid starting point! I find a lot beginners fall into the trap with over sharpening and making it to contrasty.

    With how dark the parts on the head of the bird I could see why you wouldn’t want to push the shadows too much but the shadows on the rest of the image could be brought down a bit more if that’s the look you would want to go for though.

    But that’s really the key point, how you want it to look and the overall feeling the image conveys. Making the creative choices and experimenting is going to help you find the right balance of colour correction and stylistic grade that will make your images pop.

    You are off to a great start already!

    Check out https://pixelfed.social/Cyanistes They post some amazing bird photography that will surely inspire you.