Photo Finishing or Editing - Example

Thought some of you might be interested in me finishing a photo.  I'm going to use Adobe Lightroom, but you can accomplish many, if not all, of the tasks in other photo processing programs, some FREE.  The key is to learn how to use the program you have.

I'll try to keep this one generic and simple, hopefully applicable to any photo processing program.

You'll notice very subtle changes as I go.  Sometimes that is all you want.

I'm starting with the following photo out of the camera.  It's an Anole lizard crawling across our lanai screen.

Yuck, ugly.  Going to get better.

• Cropping- basically any sizing, straightening/rotating I want.  I wanted to fill the frame more.

• White Balance - I shoot camera RAW, so I set White Balance to Daylight
  
  
  
  
• Exposure Adjustments - brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows

•  Color - saturation and/or vibrance, I typically use vibrance as it is not so over-powering

• Contrast - Decided I wanted a little more contrast at this point.

• Sharpening - Next is some sharpening and noise reduction.  NOTE: This will NOT fix a blurry, out of focus photo.  Just crispen it up a bit.  Is crispen a word? LOL

•  Vignette - Finally a little dark vingette around the edges to make it pop a bit.

 

This is a pretty basic finish, but many times, this is all I do.  Hopefully, it shows what you can accomplish in a few quick steps.