In this installment of Photo Edits: Before and After, we’re looking at a another photo taken on the beach in San Pedro, Belize to see how careful edits can dramatically change the image.
So here is the original image:
And here is the edited version:
The first step was to straighten the image. I’m not sure which one of us actually took this image but whoever it was had obviously had a few too many at the bar.
Next, I cropped the photo to get rid of distractions. I don’t care about the dock on the left. I’m interested in the girl and the sunset.
Then we start fixing the colors. Sometimes your camera sees a different image than you do. I remember this being a gloriously warm evening rather than the cold one the first image expresses so we warmed it up a bit. I did this by adjusting the white balance to make it warmer and then by increasing the saturation of the oranges to create a more dramatic sunset.
Finally, I added in a bit of contrast and sharpened the image since I feel like most raw shots need this step.
What do you think? Did I create a good photo out of a pretty average one or did I let my artistic interpretation go too far and make something that wasn’t real?
The Wandering Engineer 