INSTRUCTIONS & TIPS
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The following article is provided by: Mark Denney (Outdoor & Landscape Photographer)
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Five Editing Traps Worth Avoiding
Hello friend,
After editing photos for a while, most photographers start to notice something interesting.
The mistakes that happen in the field are usually easy to spot. The mistakes that happen during editing are much harder to recognize.
That’s because editing is subjective. When you’re in the middle of it, everything can feel right until it suddenly doesn’t.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a handful of editing traps that tend to show up again and again. Not because photographers lack skill, but because these mistakes are easy to make when there’s no clear structure guiding decisions.
Here are five patterns I’ve learned to watch for.
Bright shadows
It’s tempting to lift every shadow until detail is visible everywhere. But shadows are meant to be dark.
The goal isn’t maximum detail. It’s balance. When shadows become too bright, images often start to feel flat or artificial.
What I’ve found helps is turning on the clipping indicator(J) and using this to help me determine what an adequate level of shadow recovery is.
When you turn on the clipping indicator and see blue, you have areas of your image that are pure black and lack any detail. Being able to identify areas that are pure black greatly helps to determine which portions of your image need more shadow recovery applied.
This provides you with a good baseline to begin pulling up the detail in those shadow areas until you no longer see the blue indicator.
Letting distractions slip through
Even when you’re careful in the field, small distractions have a way of sneaking into the frame.
The danger comes when those details go unnoticed during editing. A quick scan around the edges of the image before finishing an edit can make a huge difference.
Rushing the crop
Cropping isn’t just about trimming the frame. It affects balance, flow, and where the viewer’s eye rests.
Small cropping adjustments are often the difference between an image that feels complete and one that feels slightly off.
ORIGINAL CROP
REVISED CROP
When I review past images, I often find small cropping errors or uncover better ways to crop a photo in order to create a more impactful composition. I’d encourage you to review some of your past images, I guarantee you’ll discover at least one that you can improve by applying a small cropping change.
Uncertain contrast
Contrast is one of the easiest things to overdo or underdo.
Without a reference point, it’s hard to know what’s appropriate for a given scene.
This could be adding or removing contrast from the original version. This practice provides me with two versions with two different levels of contrast to compare and decide which image has the more appropriate amount applied.
This simple strategy has been a game changer for me as I find it much easier to see which level of contrast is more appropriate for a particular image when I have two versions that I can compare side by side.
Over editing
This one gets everyone at some point.
When the edit becomes the first thing you notice, it’s usually a sign that things have gone too far. Stepping away and coming back later is often the simplest solution.
It’s amazing how quickly our eyes adjust to the way something looks, especially when you’ve been editing a photo for awhile. Subtlety is the real key - personally, I feel that post processing should not distract from an image rather it should enhance or compliment the photograph.
If the first thing you notice when looking at your photo is the edit, then you’ve probably gone too far. Unfortunately, this is something we all go through and should go through, as this learning curve is what creates our personal styles, and helps us to identify what “too much” actually is.
None of these are failures. They’re part of learning how to see your own work more clearly.
The better you get at identifying these patterns, the more confident your editing decisions become.
Most of these traps don’t come from bad technique. They come from not having a clear system for deciding where attention is needed and how much is enough.
I hope you were able to learn something from these istructions.
- Mark Denney
Please check out my website at: https://markdenneyphotography.com/