/p/ — Post Processing Before & After

File: [2026_06_02]_settings_before_after.png (26 KB, 355x680)

I started with linear curves and adjusted them on the low end to prevent shadow clipping (that's why they're raised) but also pulled down the very darkest parts that remained to preserve contrast. There was an uneven cast of light in the original so I pulled down the highlights until the intensity had diminished to my liking. I still pulled up the lighter areas remaining though for contrast's sake. I applied these adjustments with a LUT already on (not how I usually work but in this case I found the colours I liked after I'd already done some tone curve adjustments and went back and started over). Cropped 4:3 with rule of diagonal guidelines and resized for sharing online.
Definitely curious how others would have approached adjusting the highlights and shadows in this one, if there were perhaps a better way or if I should have aimed for a lighter end result. I do like the end result but I'm still curious how else I could have done this.

File: shindig_after.jpg (996 KB, 1339x1080)

I tried an odd crop on this one. Using the rule of diagonal guidelines, I place the points of most interest along the diagonal lines, which led to this odd aspect ratio (1.24:1). I do like the original composition but is this crop more effective at showing the most interesting parts of the scene? ie the party lights and the players.

File: [2026_06_02]_shindig_settings.png (30 KB, 355x768)

This is what I adjusted to get the after. The two high points on the first tone curve are the guy on the left's face (the lower point) and the guy second from the right's face (the higher point). I pulled up the black point to prevent clipping but otherwise didn't adjust the shadows as they already seemed dark enough. On the second curve I did a small adjustment to the contrast in the crowd, pulling up the lightness on someone's shirt and bringing down a neighbouring dark area to just above the clipping point (this is easy with RawTherapee since you can ctrl click on areas of the picture to set points on the tone curve). I brought the saturation down to prevent clipping of out-of-gamut colours (this only matters for my display gamut) but I brought it down a lot more after that because the colours seemed really "inky" and "blotchy," still way too saturated.
Let me know if you think these edits were effective, if I could do anything better, etc., or if I should have taken the edits in a different direction (maybe more high-key, black and white, etc.)

This link will be active for 24 hours. If you'd like to get the files after that, reply to this comment. Don't pass these off as your own photos on your personal social media. I'm only sharing the RAW data for the purposes of this thread. If you do edit the RAWs, leave a description of what you adjusted in your post.
https://wormhole.app/qlQ1X1#c5y_KtocW56gnm5z7HFh5g

Anon get your fuckin eyes checked

>>4512370
>>4512371
Before is better in this case, in every possible way from exposure right through to the crop.

>>4512371
I don't have time to do better but the colors are colorblind tier awful, it looks like a film negative. The crop is exceptionally awkward, ignoring the natural flow of the string lights while keeping a huge black space on the right, which feels extremely unbalanced and uncomfortable.

>>4512356 (OP)
I actually like this one. I would say it's stupid to take such an underexposed photo, but there is not too much noise, and the color of the light is eerie in a good way. I think it's a cool photo.

File: [2026_06_02]_shindig_crop_leading_lines.png (578 KB, 888x503)

>>4512429
>The colors are colorblind tier awful. It looks like a film negative.
I don't agree. I think you're overstating it. However, I'm open to hearing anything constructive you have to say about the colours. I'm not satisfied with the desaturated look I went for but I didn't find the fully saturated colours any better.
>The crop is exceptionally awkward, ignoring the natural flow of the string lights while keeping a huge black space on the right, which feels extremely unbalanced and uncomfortable.
I think you're exaggerating the awkwardness of the crop although I do tend to agree the lights are actually leading out of frame in the crop whereas their direction made sense in the original. I took on board what you said about the unnatural flow of the string lights and adjusted the crop. I think it captures more of their flow from the original shot while still cutting away some superfluous fluff.

>>4512441

Different anon here... I don't like the colpr edit and the pic aint great, but the edit does make me look at the stage, while the original directs my eye to the left side. It's because of the lit area. Make it dark so it doesn't pull attention towards the edge. It will not make the pic great though

Bro these edits fucking suck. Somehow the SOOC JPGs are actually the better photos.

File: Screenshot_20260603_153103.jpg (410 KB, 930x1067)

>>4512441
You can disagree but I was not intentionally exaggerating. The crop and colors were very bad. I explained what made the crop bad, so it is constructive. What makes the color bad, is that you tried to correct extremely saturated stage lights. You cannot recover neutral tones from a subject lit with colored light in the dark. The result looks very unnatural, because you dulled the colors of the stage lights but the tones of everything is still fucked, including skin tones which anyone can see are wrong.

Like, if you don't see what's wrong here, you are unironically colorblind.

i choose to believe this is bait because if its not its really sad for op

>>4512576
No, the skin tones are fine, they’re about a zone VI/VII. The bassist and guitarist on the far left are about zone V.
>bad
>bad
>very bad
>unnatural
>dull
>fucked
>wrong
The only adjective I agree with here is dull, the rest are not helpful. You at least acknowledged my goal was to correct the extremely saturated stage lights but after reading your comment I still don’t have a better idea on how I could approach that. If you are so certain the tones are wrong, which I don’t agree they are, you need to use less ambiguous language to convey that because I don’t understand why you think that.

>>4512667
>No, the skin tones are fine, they’re about a zone VI/VII.
One of the funniest sentences I've read on here in a while

>>4512668
You’re not helpful, you’re an abusive troll. I don’t find that funny, only very sad and pathetic.

>>4512667
everyone tells you your edit sucks. you just have too much ego to take my advice.

> You at least acknowledged my goal was to correct the extremely saturated stage lights
Yes I know because I did that 10000 times that's the point of asking for advice here

> you need to use less ambiguous language
when you use a very saturated light, you push together many similar colors on the spectrum. if you use just green light for example, you're gonna see 2 colors: green and black. That's physics. If you show a photo with green lighting, the brain understands that's green lighting and automatically recovers the original colors on the objects it recognize (see https://m.dpreview.com/news/8615103660/this-photo-of-some-strawberries-with-no-red-pixels-is-the-new-the-dress). But if you auto correct like you did, you remove the color cast while keeping the crushed tones, which gives this abomination. Now that was a thorough explanation, but if you seriously don't see the is something wrong, not sure it's gonna help you much.

>>4512671
that's not me but he's kinda right

>>4512667
> how I could approach that
unfortunately you cannot recover recover in post, especially when the original is underexposed and taken from too far away

>>4512691
working link:
https://m.dpreview.com/news/8615103660/this-photo-of-some-strawberries-with-no-red-pixels-is-the-new-the-dress

Is this a joke thread or is OP being absolutely serious?

>>4512793
Judging from the spergout, I think he was serious.

>>4512813
Tragic. The JPGs from his camera looked better than his edits kek.

This thread has to be some form of advanced trolling, I refuse to believe that anyone could actually be this retarded.

>>4512895
its been my favorite thread so far, it makes me want to see a general of just the very worst edits

>>4512371
4:5 is the best aspect ratio you bastard.

>>4512371
Why do you even want to have the picture look like this? I don't understand.

>>4513757
I wanted the picture to be less intensely saturated, so I lowered the saturation. I needed feedback on the saturation and I got it, it was too much for everyone who commented.
and I cropped it to bring more attention to the stage, and I got some feedback that it was awkward and cut off the natural flow, so I followed that advice and tried a rectangular crop that incorporated more of the scene but still focussed in on what I wanted beople to see
I'm not sure how to approach the colours so I haven't retouched those yet

File: rolling_hills-o-s.jpg (1.61 MB, 1629x1080)

another one

File: [2026_06_12]_2-1_crop.png (897 KB, 1416x1008)

tried this crop first
exposure settings on the right
didn't pull the shadows very hard
but I thought the highlights needed a lift

File: [2026_06_12]_closer_crop.png (1.39 MB, 1467x1009)

I wasn't completely happy with the centre of the frame on the first crop so I tried cutting closer on this crop
I think it's marginally better but I also like the panoramic feel of the first, feedback more than welcome
also my only other change here was a portra 400 lut which I applied before making the curve adjustments

please have a stab at a different approach if you are keen on demonstrating the best edit possible for this picture
https://wormhole.app/70vELk#sxveyHr4OA6fBHSTefScPw

>>4513760
If you took a good picture it wouldn't be so difficult to crop and edit it. Or are you just working with random snapshots to practice editing?

>>4513763
>Or are you just working with random snapshots to practice editing?
yeah, making the most of what I've got.

>>4513765
Before you attempt to edit a picture that has nothing going for it you should focus on capturing a scene that has nice lighting, a good composition, and interesting subject matter. Editing a picture should compliment or accentuate what an image already has going for it. If a picture has nothing going for it what is even the point of editing it? You could focus on making it as "true to reality" as possible, but that's pretty boring most of the time.

If I had to edit your picture I would reduce exposure a touch, increase contrast and drop the highlights to make the sky a bit darker and show off a bit more of the colors and clouds. The bottom of your crop is where I would put it, but I would include more sky. It feels way too tight in your crop.

File: KING4685-s.jpg (3.21 MB, 2814x1080)

>>4513766
>a picture that has nothing going for it
there's really no point in discussing this with you because you don't have a genuine approach to assessing my pictures. that's so absurdly reductive. there's rolling hills, clumps of trees and a farm house tucked away in the corner. that's just not a helpful thing to say in any respect. if the scene is not to your taste, I don't object to that at all, but saying it has nothing going for it is not true.
>Editing a picture should compliment or accentuate what an image already has going for it.
That is what my crop does: brings more attention to the most interesting parts of the picture.
I'm just not convinced by your assertions the picture has nothing going for it. if that's really true, you should be able to say it in a way I can't disagree with.
>I would reduce exposure a touch, increase contrast and drop the highlights to make the sky a bit darker and show off a bit more of the colors and clouds.
true, the highlights probably have more detail than my curve adjustment allows you to see
I hear your comment about the sky but I am more concerned that people will see the telegraph poles on the right hand side, so I aligned them with one of the diagonals. I can't have them aligned with a diagonal and still have a big view of the sky.
this is ultimately what I'm gonna settle on

>he's back and still sperging
I love this thread so much it's unreal. If this is just trolling, it's a masterpiece.

File: KING4766-0-s.jpg (1.64 MB, 1629x1080)

another one

File: [2026_06_12]_wuthering_landscape_crop_poi.png (881 KB, 1467x1009)

this is the crop and curves I settled on
could use some feedback on whether the lighting looks good or could use improvement, and whether the crop is effective
please take advantage of the raw file if you would like to show a better or different approach to editing this pic
https://wormhole.app/dL1Qe7#2lhu-pZ8TQNxa8FUzQ9zBg

File: KING4766-s.jpg (1.76 MB, 2117x1080)

the export
i used an ektar 100 lut and made the curves adjustments after applying it
auto wb

>>4513768
You're losing yourself in compositional techniques/rules that are doing nothing for your image. You can't just take a pile of shit and crop it to one third of your image and call it good.

Since you asked here you go...
I think the building tucked away is lost in the darkness and lacks any sort of presence or visual interest. Call me jaded, but your rolling hills have no grandeur or real beauty to them. It's a couple grassy hills. The grass isn't even nice looking.. The trees feel more in the way than anything you would call complimentary to the scene or compositionally interesting. The telephone poles and their wires on the left ruin the sky and clouds.
The lighting is extremely dull and makes the whole image feel dingy and ugly.(your edit made the scene even more dramatically ugly. You made the clouds look like smoggy pollution.)
The picture also has a distracting softness to it that makes it feel almost like you were in a car and snapped this pic out the window, or your aperture was too small and the image has too much diffraction.

>>4513774
Is your monitor calibrated? The image is way too dark.

>>4513770
It has got to be trolling.

>>4513768
the image was terrible to start with and no amount of cropping or editing will save it. you're a stubborn retard that is unable to to get things even vaguely correct at the time and just keeps trying in vein to correct it in post, all the while defending your mistakes and terrible fixes.

i'd honestly believe you had never even picked up a camera or knew what photography was at all until just a few weeks ago.

>>4513775
I respect what you have to say here, it's very detailed and I have a lot to go on if I were to shoot in the same location again
f/8 on an f/2.8 lens so yes, diffraction probably just started to be an issue.
>The lighting is extremely dull
a fact of the cloudy day, worth noting for when I choose to go out taking photos, though. i like the dinginess and ugliness of cloudy days, it does feel like home. could be pollution, actually, a lot of coal mining in this area. but yes, noted, cloudy days are dull and doing anything to exacerbate that dullness is extremely ugly in your eyes.
>I think the building tucked away is lost in the darkness and lacks any sort of presence or visual interest.
I don't agree with that, it is the first identifiable thing when I look at the picture.
>The telephone poles and their wires on the left ruin the sky and clouds.
I don't agree with that either, but I like telegraph poles in my skylines, it feels like home and I think they're interesting

File: [2026_06_12]_rolling_hills_raw_histogram.png (17 KB, 338x212)

>>4513777
>you're a stubborn retard that is unable to to get things even vaguely correct at the time
that's not true. the raw histogram shows that. if anything, i could have gone 1 stop wider on the aperture. that's more than vaguely correct.

>>4513779
>I don't agree with that, it is the first identifiable thing when I look at the picture.
He's right though. You might have some form of autism or some shit, because it honestly doesn't. The eye just ends up being drawn to the empty space between the two trees on the left of the image, the house is barely noticeable and isn't the first thing you get drawn to.

>>4513780
>that's not true. the raw histogram shows that.
There is no way someone can be this retarded, I just can't believe it.

>>4513776
>Is your monitor calibrated? The image is way too dark.
yes, although I have the windows open in my room and the brightness on my laptop screen only at 70%, which are different conditions to the lighting when I calibrated it (blinds drawn, 55% brightness, no room lights on).

What's your gear? I have a strong feeling it's Nikon or Panasonic.

>>4513779
Every patch of tree and then the patch of trees with the building is tonally similar and there is barely any sort of leading line that brings your eye there. I wouldnt really even call the powerlines far right leading lines. The trees in front of the building obscure it even more.
IMO it is more that the building is the one different thing than just trees, hills and sky in the picture than having any sort of draw created photographically.
If you wanted to dramatize the ugly and dull sky/lighting it would have done you better to take a much closer shot of the building to show off more of the decay in the structure. I would imagine there would be much more you could work with compositionally if you got closer to the building as well.

Diffraction has to do with sensor size and pixel pitch, not maximum aperture of a lens, btw.

>>4512895
every darktable user is like this

>>4513783
>What's your gear?
Pentax K-5 IIs (16mp aps-c, no aa filter) and pentax 50-135mm 2.8 >>4513759, sigma 18-35 1.8 >>4513771 and pentax 28mm 3.5 on the first two pics ITT
>I have a strong feeling it's Nikon or Panasonic.
why?

>>4513784
>Diffraction has to do with sensor size and pixel pitch, not maximum aperture of a lens, btw.
I've never heard this before, the most I've heard about diffraction is that its a property of light bending around the edge of the aperture which is more apparent at smaller apertures. could you explain like I'm five how diffraction relates to sensor size and pixel pitch, not max. aperture?

>>4513784
>If you wanted to dramatize the ugly and dull sky/lighting it would have done you better to take a much closer shot of the building to show off more of the decay in the structure. I would imagine there would be much more you could work with compositionally if you got closer to the building as well.
it's just one of those things, private property and all that.
>Every patch of tree and then the patch of trees with the building is tonally similar
true, and I suppose you're implying that's a negative but I don't see it that way, it's a characteristic of the lighting, the trees and probably my curves adjustments as well
>there is barely any sort of leading line that brings your eye there
that's true. it's not possible for EVERY composition to feature leading lines, though. having said that, the hills themselves are lines and all the points of interest (such as they are) sit along those lines.
>>4513781
>There is no way someone can be this retarded, I just can't believe it.
plenty of info in the raw to work with is my point, possibly could have been a little more highlight detail but it's hardly as dramatically incorrect as you stated it to be

>>4513780
>>4513792
the criticism was also about the terrible composition, which you dodged in both your replies.

>>4513793
>the criticism was also about the terrible composition
not every criticism is merited

>>4513794
The one about composition absolutely is.

>>4512357
>>4512370
>>4513759
I would respectfully suggest that you'll get more skill improvement by shooting more and studying photobooks than by spending hours post processing photos that contain irredeemable technical mistakes.

Also, it's never nice to be clowned on, but when everyone in the thread agrees, there's usually a reason.

>>4513780
The is is not a good way to think about your images visually, and why I laughed above when you said
>skin tones are fine, they’re about a zone VI/VII.
Things like the zone system and curves are tools to help you, but they aren't like rules to follow and if you do everythings peachy.

Anyone not offering edit suggestions, or trying to show sample edits and just saying "it's bad don't bother" should be safely ignored. It is true that there is room for improvement with the shot, and you can only do so much with editing, but people are just using that as a cope to not bother with even trying to edit.

>>4513791
The practical answer is that larger sensors let you stop down more before diffraction becomes apparent.

I downloaded the file last night so I'll take a shot at it today.

>>4513806
>you'll get more skill improvement by... studying photobooks
that gives me an idea and some encouragement to get a book I saw on marketplace recently: the folio society book of the world's 100 greatest photographs...