Editing Comparison Fall Color
November 14, 2022 - When we were at Colorado National Monument, this tree caught my eye. I bet you’re thinking what tree.
Fall Color at Colorado National Monument - Raw File
It looked amazing in person. The original photo suffers from having the main subject in the shade and being too far away. I say it was too far away but I take most of my photos on a macro lens which does weird things to the perspective. It’s also a raw file, so flat.
Since we’re sitting at home among boxes wanting to move. We tried another photo editing comparison.
Our Boxes but Definitely Not our Curtains
The first thing I wanted to do is crop out the boring part of the photo.
My Edited Photo
The front tree is what originally grabbed my attention. In person it glowed yellow but it had lost that in camera. The tree behind it was interesting too but I wanted to separate them so I returned some sunlight to the front tree but left the back one in the shade of the canyon.
His Edit
Without having looked at my edit, he ended up with a very similar photo. Cropping it, to lose the very bright light, allows the viewer to concentrate on the fall color. He chose to keep the two trees with the most yellow leaves in the same light, but added a vignette to draw the viewer’s eye to the trees.
His - Raw - Mine
I think it is interesting that his trees look like they have more leaves. Photo editing doesn’t really add leaves to trees. The darker shade of yellow/orange just makes it show up better on the screen.