When it comes to landscape photography I think there are two categories of mistakes that are common amongst photographers. You have your in-field and on-location mistakes and then you have your post processing and photo editing mistakes. I’ve always found on-location mistakes easier to resolve as opposed to post processing mistakes due to the subjective nature of photo editing. It can be rather difficult to determine whether or not you’re making photo editing mistakes when you’re in the “moment” going through your post processing workflow.
In this article, I review the five photo editing mistakes that have negatively impacted my landscape photography. I’ve found these five mistakes to be the hardest for me personally to resolve for various reasons. Some of these editing mistakes are caused by sheer laziness when it comes to my own post processing workflow and others have to do with my inability to identify when I’m actually committing a post processing mistake. Much like anything, being able to determine when you’re making mistakes is critical in order to have any chance at resolving them.
5) Bright Shadows
When it comes to identifying the appropriate level of shadow recovery I tend to struggle. I’m much better now than I used to be, however I still find myself scratching my head upon reviewing some images I’ve released over the past year. Shadows are meant to be dark, but determining how dark is the real question. What I’ve found helps is to turn on the shadow clipping indicator inside of Lightroom and using this as a leading indicator to assist me in determining an adequate level of shadow recovery.
4) Leaving in Distractions
I’m typically laser focused when it comes to looking for distractions within my photos, whether that’s on-location or during post processing. But, sometimes I get lazy or I rush through an edit and don’t take the time to properly examine an image in it’s entirety only to find out later there are distracting elements that I didn’t notice during my initial review process that should have been removed.
3) Poor Cropping
There’s a lot more to cropping outside of just “crop or don’t crop”. You have things like aspect ratios, uneven horizons, and corner management to take into account. I believe the crop tool is not only highly under appreciated, but also one of the most powerful photo editing tools at our disposal..when used effectively. When I review my images, I often find small cropping errors or uncover better ways to crop a particular photo in order to create a more impactful composition.
2) Bad Contrast
This is perhaps the single largest photo editing struggle that exists for me today. I often find myself either adding too much contrast or not enough contrast to an image. It can be difficult to see where an appropriate level of contrast lives within a photograph. Something I’ve found that helps is to create a virtual copy and edit a second version in order to make an additional contrast adjustment, whether it’s adding or reducing contrast. This gives me two versions with two different levels of contrast to compare and decide which image has the more appropriate amount applied.
Over-Editing
With all the post processing tools at our disposal it’s very easy to get carried away and end up with an over-edited photo. This is something that plagues all photographers at one point or another throughout their photographic journey. The best advice I’ve heard that assists in determining when you might be over-editing an image is to simply stop and walk away. Let your eyes rest, reset, and revisit at a later time. It’s amazing how quickly our eyes can adjust to something especially when you’ve been working for awhile on a single photo. 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 upon looking at one of your images is the edit then you’ve probably gone too far.
Disclaimer: A highly exaggerated example of over-editing:)
This is my final and much more realistic version.
Those are the 5 worst editing mistakes that have negatively impacted my landscape photography and I hope that you’re able to walk away from this article with some beneficial information that you can apply to your photography moving forward.
Mark