Is my editing good enough?

[Arunabh Bhattacharjee]

I previously asked the forum to check out my pictures & give me tips to make my images better. I received many helpful replies & one of the major problems poiinted out by the professionals was that my images are badly lit or the lighting is flat. The reason for this being I used to click the "Auto adjust brightness & contrast" in PSE 13. So I dumped PSE 13 & switched to lightroom. And I personally found my images manually edited in Lightroom better than those in photoshop.

After a long wait for a notification of failed QC, I was able to submit the images edited in lightroom. I personally liked the new images than the old ones but it will be very helpful if any of you could just check out the below differences & tell me if I am doing the editing right. I watched the video recommended by Russell (

). I hope I am not over-editing my pictures. Also it will be better if you reply soon because I'll have to delete the old ones or Alamy might take action for selling images having similar composition. Here are the images:

 

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After:

 

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[Bryan]

They look a whole lot better to me!

 

I prefer to do an initial edit in LR then fine tune in PS, but that's maybe because I've used PS for many more years than I have known LR.

 

If LR were to acquire adjustment layers and some more detailed editing tools, e.g. the pen for cut-outs, then I would perhaps make more use of it.

[Arletta]

Whatta difference now! Great done

Just be careful with to much sharpening, noise etc. Try edit raw files in first steps. If you need to edit jpg do it gently.

[Rex Jarvis]

As a beginner here myself I am always willing to learn from other people and I have to say I prefer your second set.  I now have both PS and LR and it looks like I need to spend the next 5 years learning how to use them !!!

[TokyoM1ke]

As a beginner here myself I am always willing to learn from other people and I have to say I prefer your second set.  I now have both PS and LR and it looks like I need to spend the next 5 years learning how to use them !!!

I suggest that (initially) you kick off with LR presets (try them out and get a feel for them), then correct from there. Use Photoshop only when you need to: for example, the spot healing and cutout functionality are far better than LR.

[Ed Rooney]

You're on the right path, AB, no question. Oh, the water on the lower right of the boat now looks over processed and too diff from the rest of the water.

 

Rex, five days, not years. The only thing that might take 5 years would be me learning German (In just 2.5 years I could order lunch. Mit bier, bitte!) 

[Arunabh Bhattacharjee]

Thanks a lot everybody. I'll delete the old pictures now. And from now onwards I'll use Lightroom for most of the editing (photoshop sometimes). Most importantly I learnt how misguiding the Auto adjust brightness & contrast button is in photoshop. Thank you all again.

[NYCat]

This is his appearance at B&H on Photoshop. If you check his website you might find some specific help. He sells video training.

 

Paulette

[Jill Morgan]

Thanks for posting Tim Grey video tutorial!!!

Does he have same for ACR?

So far watched to 16:00.

Have never fiddled with Black & White RAW sliders.

Tried Alt + sliders to see start of clipping.

But am not clear purpose of "stretching" histogram to this point...?

Is it a data-preserving way to acheive best contrast? Or?

(doing it each image = more processing time!!)

Thanks in advance, Joburg Jeff

 

Adobe had a fabulous Creative Live series on ACR

 

You can get it here at adobe: https://www.creativelive.com/courses/adobe-camera-raw-optimizing-enhancing-retouching-jack-davis

 

It was a 3 day course with Jack Davis.

 

Jill