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 Forest Scenery:

Common issue: Temperature seems too warm, although this may be a personal preference for images shot in autumn.

Recommendation: Try pulling the temperature slider to the extreme right or left and then gradually pull it back. While eyeing the image, you can gauge what looks natural and works for the scene you’re editing.

Photo #2 Street Portrait:

Common issue: Removing distractions in the background with local adjustments or color modifiers may incorporate more distractions.

Recommendation: Ensure that there aren’t any harsh lines or edges when removing distracting elements as these can be distracting to the viewer. When brushing, ensure you have a soft brush edge with high feathering.

Photo #3 Bird Reflection: 

Common issue: Image has very similar tones and colors through out, making it difficult for the subject to attract viewer attention.

Recommendation: “Faking” directional light helps to focus the viewer’s attention into the subject that you are editing. I like to use the masking bug for this with either a radial mask or a gradient mask. Another method is to blur the foreground and/or background to focus the viewer into a particular part of the frame. Lens blur and a gradient mask works great for this.

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