List of newbie photo editing skills

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What would you say are the first (up to 10) photo editing skills that a newbie landscape photographer should learn?

I specify landscape because this list might differ for portraiture or other genres of photography.

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  1. white balance - simple thing, but fundamental to your color.
  2. tone curve - I think understanding this in all its forms is crucial to managing dynamic range down from what the camera captures to what your render medium can handle.
  3. color management - this is both the judicious application of the appropriate color profiles in the right places, as well as mastery of the really neat recent color tools like found in darktable.

That’s it. The rest, IMHO, is just goofing around… :laughing:

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  1. Getting the correct white balance
  2. Dealing with the full dynamic range of the scene, so an HDR/luminance masking workflow
  3. Local luminance control, dodging and burning
  4. Color Control/Color Grading.
  5. Clone tools, etc. Removing things from a scene
  6. Making good selections to avoid haloing and obvious editing artifacts.
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By use cases -

Sky color shades - color masking sky for color change (eg : gimp - rotate colors)
dehaze
Dodge - Mainly, Burn - occasionally
Highlight recovery techniques

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IMHO the key skill is to “see” the finished image when you take it. And then simply use any suitable software to get there :wink: When I can’t see the finished image I often don’t take the shot in the first place.

I get impressed by people that take boring images and make them stand out.

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I would prioritise learning both colour management, and the difference between scene-referred and display referred editing.

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In my opinion you have to learn the basic skills to work on any image:

  • work on exposure/brightness/tonecurves
  • work on contrast/sharpness
  • work on whitepoint/colors

If you know how to to that, you should learn to apply these settings locally with masking.

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I agree but you need the skills to do that. Some minds-eye views of the final image require complicated techniques, others just simple techniques. From my point of view, when I was just a beginner, my sight of a final image would have been basic because that’s all my editing skills could have achieved: I had absolutely no idea how to edit to create the sight that a professional might have had.

Therefore, I’m assuming, based on my experience, that a beginner photographer may only conceive of a final image that requires only basic techniques, something that is achievable with basic editing skills.

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If you have really good landscape images, nature is doing the job for you and there is often only need for some basic adjustments. Advanced techniques are mostly needed when the shots are less interesting :wink:.

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The points mentioned so far are mostly low-level skills. I wouldn’t disagree with them, but I think high-level skills are more important.

I think the first editing skill, and arguably the most important, is evaluation.

Does this change make the image better or worse? Does it help communicate, or hinder it? What hypothetical changes would improve the image?

As we become accustomed to the tools and what they can do, we improve the ability to visualise what changes we can make, and how those changes will affect the message.

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Wonderful considerations Alan Gibson

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Yes sure, but the initial question referred explicitly to newbie photo editing skills.

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Evaluation is a newbie skill. If we can’t evaluate the results of an edit, we are working in the dark. I think it is the first skill a newbie editor needs to learn.

It is also an advanced skill, which is enhanced as we become more experienced. Perhaps it continues developing over a lifetime.

And we learn from each other. The playraws on this forum show us what other editors have done, and we can evaluate the results of those edits.

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Clearly the newbie has to develop some kind of feeling for the image they want to produce, and this applies to the composition of the shot they take, as well as the processing they apply to the raw image.

I struggle with this and although I can appreciate the before and after videos that people make using darktable, I find it hard to put that into my own photos. However, I am in Madrid at the moment and having spent the morning in the Prado museum, it occurs to me that the great art on display has a lot to say about techniques for improving an image.

Maybe the way to think about DT skills is to look at great images, including art, and work out why the image works and how you like/respond to that image, then review the DT techniques that can reproduce or enhance those aspects of your own photos.

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Great suggestion, to look at art

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Go right ahead :smiley:

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First you need to know what you want, and if you can get there. This starts already when you take (or not take) the image. Sometimes I see a good motive - but I don’t take it because angle ain’t right, obstruction etc.

It help to look at other images. All. Good and bad.

  • work on exposur/brightness/tonecurves
  • work on contrast/sharpness
  • work on whitepoint/colors

This are the key corner points and get you >90%

Aurélien Pierre had some quick edit videos some years ago, like 2 Minutes per images, where he uses very few modules in a quick & simple way. This is quite helpful (not just) for beginners.

Found it! - darktable 3.0 live - fast workflow for pros/time-constrained photographers

Will also re-watch it.

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LoL