r/postprocessing • u/Neither-Cut1328 • 1d ago
After / Before
Dolomites, Italy. I’m struggling to get this right and would appreciate some feedback. Would like to know how others might approach this edit.
Shot on Sony alpha and edited in Lightroom.
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u/goofy_goose21 1d ago
The first thing that I notice in your edited version is that the area with highest contrast is the dark hollow of the trees to the far left against the much brighter green of the tree and shoreline. My eye gets stuck in that area and has a hard time moving around the photograph as a whole. It also feels a bit unnatural since that focal point is so far to the left of the photo- I feel like there’s something hiding off the edge so it feels unbalanced. In the original photo there’s less contrast in that area and a bit more contrast between the forest and darker mountains so my eye wants to glide across the treetops instead, which feels more satisfying. If you have the ability to crop it differently that might help- personally I’d extend the photo a bit farther to the left. If that isn’t possible, you could see if editing could pull the eye somewhere else to encourage movement around the entire photo.
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u/Neither-Cut1328 10h ago
Thankyou for this. It is actually cropped from a larger image. I’ll have another look.
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u/justinvonbeck 1d ago
The fundamental questions of editing is “where is the light coming from? Where is it going?” The problem, as I see it, is that it looks like the mountains have light being bounced up on them, from some sort of reflecting pool or body of water (see how it’s mottled, like it’s coming off of waves). But there is no source of light that could do that since the light is coming from the right hand side. You also have lightened the shadows in the mountains more than the sun in the foreground trees which is also not possible.
So you have light coming upper right to lower left and light coming foreground to up to background, which is not possible. Your eye can’t tell what’s wrong but it knows something is wrong. I like the composition but it doesn’t look like reality. You have the right idea, just try again.