Hey everyone, welcome to the July episode of our Edit Explorer series! In Edit Explorer, we dive deep into submitted photo edits, offering constructive feedback and valuable tips that can enhance your photo editing workflows and techniques. If you’re a member of ON1 Plus, you can submit your edited photos along with sidecar files for review. Today, we’ve randomly selected three submissions from the community to discuss editing techniques and inject new life into these images.

Photo #1 Record Shopping:

Common issue: I had no issues with the editing, as it was very simple and minimal, which worked great for the picture.

Recommendation: Try for a more dramatic look with images like this so the focus of the viewer is directly on the textures in the image. In this case, the jewelry and the record bin were great focal points to emphasize with some stronger filters and editing.

Photo #2 Milky Way:

Common issue: Over-editing the stars and Milky Way with strong adjustments and filters.

Recommendation: When it comes to editing night-time images and especially Milky Way, most of the time you want to keep things natural in appearance. With Milky Way shots, try using the develop tab to bring out the basic looks of the photo with midtones, shadows, whites, and even a Neutral camera profile.

Photo #3 Doggo: 

Common issue: Over processing animal or wildlife photographs.

Recommendation: With wildlife, pets, or animals – typically the more natural the look, the better. I would recommend toning things down just a bit to ensure that the dog in the photograph appears natural.

Photo #4 Skyline with Reflection: 

Common issue: No issues with the edit, but maybe try bringing in a sky into the background for more interest.

Recommendation: With reflections that have ripples, use a sky as a layer rather than using the reflection option in the Sky Swap filter. From there, use motion blur to emulate the ripples and then paint the layer away from the existing structures and reflections.

Thanks to everyone that submitted their images! Submit to the next Edit Explorer here —›